If Employer Doesn’t Know, Then Plaintiff Can’t Show (Disability-Related Liability)

Seyfarth Synopsis: The California Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for an employer on claims for disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, and failure to engage in the interactive process because the employer did not know, and could not reasonably have inferred, that the employee had a disability. The Court emphasized that erratic or unusual behavior alone is insufficient to impute knowledge of a disability unless the disability is the only reasonable interpretation of the observed conduct. Husband v. Target Corporation

The Facts

Daniel Husband was hired by Target Corporation in October 2020 as a fulfillment employee. After approximately twenty months of uneventful employment, in June and July 2022 there were incidents in which Husband was emotional, erratic, and irrational, including engaging in confrontations with coworkers, claiming that inanimate objects were “laughing” at him, and making statements suggesting that he may have harmed others. Supervisors found the conduct disturbing and sent Husband home, recommending that he seek medical evaluation.

On July 9, 2022, Target terminated Husband for violating its workplace violence policy. At the time of termination, Husband had not disclosed any disability or requested accommodation.

Husband later provided a medical note clearing him to return to work, but the note did not disclose any diagnosis. He subsequently filed suit asserting claims under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) for (1) disability discrimination, (2) failure to accommodate, and (3) failure to engage in the interactive process.

The Trial Court’s Decision

The trial court granted Target's motion for summary judgment on all of Husband’s claims, concluding that there were no triable issues of material fact as to any of the asserted FEHA causes of action. In particular, the court determined that Husband could not establish the threshold requirement that Target had knowledge of his alleged disability at the time it made the decision to terminate his employment.

The undisputed evidence showed that Husband never disclosed his bipolar disorder to Target, and the court found that his workplace conduct, while unusual and concerning, was susceptible to multiple reasonable interpretations, including non-disability-related explanations. As a result, the court held that the observed behavior did not compel the conclusion that Husband was suffering from a mental disability, and therefore could not support imputing knowledge of such a disability to the employer.

The Court of Appeal’s Decision

The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment, centering its analysis on the foundational requirement that an employer must have knowledge of an employee’s disability in order to incur liability under FEHA. The Court emphasized that this knowledge requirement is not merely a peripheral consideration, but rather a necessary predicate to each of the statutory theories advanced by Husband.

Where an employee does not disclose the existence of a disability, the law permits knowledge to be imputed to the employer only in narrow circumstances. Specifically, such imputation is appropriate only where the employee’s observable conduct compels the conclusion that a disability is present—either because the disability is the only reasonable interpretation of the known facts, or because the employee’s symptoms are so objectively obvious and indicative of an underlying condition that the existence of a disability necessarily follows.

Applying these principles, the Court of Appeal concluded that the record did not support imputing knowledge of Husband’s bipolar disorder to Target. Although Husband’s behavior was problematic, the Court of Appeal reasoned that such conduct, standing alone, did not meet the demanding standard required to establish constructive knowledge under FEHA. The Court of Appeal noted that while Husband’s actions could be interpreted as symptomatic of a mental health condition, they were equally susceptible to a range of alternative, non-disability-related explanations, including the effects of stress, medication interactions, substance use, or sleep deprivation. Because these alternative explanations were objectively reasonable, the existence of a mental disability was not the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from Husband’s behavior. Accordingly, Target could not, as a matter of law, be charged with knowledge of Husband’s condition.

The Court of Appeal rejected Husband’s various attempts to circumvent the knowledge requirement. First, it declined to adopt the proposition that unusual or “bizarre” behavior, without more, is sufficient to place an employer on notice of a disability, explaining that such a rule would effectively collapse the distinction between observable conduct and diagnosable condition. Second, the Court of Appeal rejected the argument that conduct associated with a disability should be equated with knowledge of the disability itself, noting that such an approach would improperly assume that employers possess the expertise to identify mental health conditions based on isolated symptoms. Third, the Court of Appeal declined Husband’s invitation to relax the knowledge requirement on equitable grounds based on his alleged inability to recognize or disclose his condition during the relevant period. The Court of Appeal explained that FEHA’s statutory framework expressly requires employer knowledge. In so doing, the Court reaffirmed that FEHA does not impose a duty on employers to be “clairvoyant,” nor does it authorize liability for failing to accommodate or respond to disabilities of which the employer is unaware.

What Husband Means for Employers

The Court of Appeal’s analysis reinforces that employers will not be held liable in the absence of knowledge of a disability. However, employers must remain mindful of the statutory duties to provide reasonable accommodation and to engage in the interactive process upon notice of a disability—whether through disclosure, third-party information, or sufficiently obvious symptoms.