An employee who was laid off while recovering from an on-the-job knee injury could go forward with a disability discrimination claim under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), a state appellate court ruled. The trial court had dismissed the claim before trial partly because it concluded that the employee had not shown that he could do his job with a reasonable accommodation.
The appellate court reversed, ruling that it was unclear whether the employer ever offered the employee an accommodation that would have enabled him to perform the essential duties of his position or had engaged in the interactive process, as required by the law.
