Fired “For Performance” Right After Disclosing a Disability? The Timing Isn’t Lost on Anyone

For years, your reviews said the same thing. Meets expectations. Exceeds expectations. Reliable. A pleasure to work with.

Then you told them. Maybe it was a diagnosis you couldn’t keep private anymore. Maybe it was a doctor’s note with restrictions, or a quiet conversation with your manager about why you’d been off lately. You weren’t asking for pity. In most cases you were barely asking for anything.

And the story about you changed. Suddenly there were “concerns.” A write-up over something that had never been a problem before. A performance improvement plan that read like it was written to fail you. And then the meeting with HR where they said the words: we’re letting you go for performance.

If that’s roughly your story, here’s what I want you to know as an employment lawyer who only represents employees: California law has seen this pattern many times before, and it is not as clean an escape hatch for employers as they think.

“Performance” is a reason — it isn’t a defense

California employers can generally fire at-will employees for poor performance, real or perceived. That part is true, and you can read more about where at-will employment ends and illegal firing begins.

But what they cannot do is fire you because of a disability — or because they’ve decided, after learning about a diagnosis, that you’ve become inconvenient, expensive, or fragile. When “performance” is the label stapled onto a decision that was really about your condition, lawyers call the label a pretext. And pretext is exactly what disability discrimination cases are usually about, because almost no employer writes down the real reason.

You may be protected even if you never used the word “disability”

California defines disability broadly — more broadly than federal law, and more broadly than most people assume. Conditions that limit a major life activity can qualify, and working itself counts as a major life activity. Cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, PTSD — depending on the facts, all of these can be covered. You generally don’t need to be severely impaired, and you don’t need to have said any magic words. Telling your supervisor about a diagnosis, turning in a doctor’s note, or requesting time off for treatment can each be enough to put your employer on notice.

Here’s the part that surprises people: you can be protected even if you aren’t disabled, if your employer treated you as though you were. California law also covers workers who are “regarded as” having a condition. If your manager started easing you out because they assumed the diagnosis meant you couldn’t hack it anymore, the assumption itself can be the problem — regardless of what you were actually capable of.

How the sudden paper trail cuts both ways

Employers build a performance file before a termination because they believe the file protects them. Sometimes it does. But a file that materializes only after a disclosure can end up as evidence for the employee instead.

Think about what your case would actually look like side by side. Years of solid reviews, then a disclosure, then criticism within weeks. Standards applied to you that weren’t applied to anyone else. A “longstanding issue” no one mentioned until after your diagnosis. An improvement plan with goals nobody could hit. Explanations that keep shifting — first it was attendance, then attitude, then a restructuring. Discrimination is usually proven with circumstantial evidence, and this before-and-after contrast is some of the most powerful circumstantial evidence there is.

Timing alone rarely wins a case by itself, and it’s fair that it doesn’t — coincidences exist. But timing plus a clean prior record plus shifting explanations is not a coincidence pattern. It’s a story a jury can follow.

The disclosure may have triggered duties they ignored

In California, learning about an employee’s disability isn’t just information an employer files away. It can trigger obligations — including, in some circumstances, a duty to talk with you in good faith about accommodations that might work, even if you never formally requested one. If your employer’s answer to your diagnosis was write-ups rather than a conversation, that failure can matter independently of the firing. We’ve written separately about what the interactive process requires and about being fired while on medical leave, because these situations often overlap — a disclosure leads to a leave, the leave leads to resentment, and the resentment leads to a “performance” termination.

The honest limits

Being diagnosed with a condition does not make anyone unfireable, and you should hear that from a lawyer rather than discover it later. If genuine, documented performance problems predate your disclosure, the case is harder. If your employer truly didn’t know about your condition when it made the decision, that’s harder too — the law generally requires that the decision-makers knew. And an employer that honestly believed its stated reason, even mistakenly, can sometimes defend on that basis.

None of those limits means you don’t have a case. They mean the answer lives in the details — what was in your file before, who knew what and when, and how the explanation held up over time. That’s exactly why it’s worth having a lawyer review your situation rather than guessing from the inside of it.

What to do now

Write down the timeline while it’s fresh: the date you disclosed, who you told, exactly what you said, and every change that followed — with dates. “March 12” is worth far more than “sometime last spring.”

Keep what’s legitimately yours: your old reviews, the write-ups, the doctor’s notes you submitted, the emails around your disclosure. Don’t take confidential company documents — preserve your own record and let a lawyer sort out the rest. If they handed you a severance agreement on the way out, read this before signing anything. And if the termination just happened, the first 72 hours checklist is the place to start.

Then don’t sit on it. These claims have deadlines, and they run from when things happened — not from when you feel ready to deal with it.

Told your employer about a diagnosis and became a “performance problem” shortly after? Find out where you stand before the deadlines run. Call (888) 376-7849 or request a free, confidential consultation. No fees unless you win.

This article is attorney advertising, is provided for informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Whether a condition qualifies as a disability — and whether any claim exists — depends entirely on the specific facts, the employer, and applicable deadlines; only a lawyer reviewing your situation can tell you what applies to you. Every case is different. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.