In Hernandez v. Rancho Santiago Community College District, the Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court decision holding that an employer failed to reasonably accommodate Plaintiff’s temporary total disability and did not engage in a good faith interactive process with Plaintiff to determine effective reasonable accommodations. Plaintiff was a probationary employee whose job performance was subject to multiple evaluations. Plaintiff was told that she would be considered a permanent employee after working for twelve months on a probationary basis. However, after over eight months of working, Plaintiff asked and was granted a three to four-month period of leave to have surgery related to a former workplace injury. Although Plaintiff was assured that she would not be fired during her leave of absence, Plaintiff was later alerted that she had been terminated.

Defendant argued that granting Plaintiff’s request for time off was a reasonable accommodation and that Section 88013(a) of the Education code required them to either terminate Plaintiff or make her a permanent employee on the one-year anniversary of her hiring. Defendant refused to hire Plaintiff as a permanent employee because her performance could not be evaluated while she was on leave. The Court disagreed, holding that granting a probationary employee who has a temporary total disability a finite leave to handle medical issues does not qualify as a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) if it leads directly to that employee being terminated. Furthermore, the Court rejected Defendant’s interpretation of Section 88013(a) in holding that the employer had the option to deduct the time Plaintiff was not able to work during the one-year probationary period, an accommodation that would have been reasonable and would not have imposed an undue hardship on the employer. Finally, the Court also held that the lower court correctly determined that the employer had not engaged in a good-faith interactive process because there was evidence to suggest that Plaintiff had been told she could not be fired for taking medical leave and yet she was indeed fired when she chose to take a finite absence.

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