A Supervisor Swore He Didn’t Know About the Disability. His Own Notes Said Otherwise.

A supervisor swore in an affidavit that he had no idea an employee was disabled. His own meeting notes said otherwise, and that contradiction just cost a Texas community college its win.

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TL;DR: A federal appeals court revived a former college employee’s disability discrimination, disability retaliation, and FMLA retaliation claims after her supervisor’s sworn denial of knowing about her disability conflicted with his own records, creating a fact question for a jury.

📄 Read the court’s opinion here

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Eleven Days Back From Leave, a Write-Up Landed

The employee spent sixteen years at a Texas community college, earning four promotions before a serious medical condition began affecting her vision, hearing, balance, and cognitive function. She took FMLA leave for surgery in late 2020 and returned in January 2021 with no restrictions.

The Fifth Circuit reversed summary judgment on her ADA discrimination claim, her ADA retaliation claim, and her FMLA retaliatory discharge claim, while affirming dismissal of a separate FMLA interference claim. The case now heads back for a jury.

Eleven days after returning from leave, she got a “Letter of Expectations” citing tardiness, her first write-up ever. Two more followed, the last flagging her raised voice as unprofessional without mentioning her hearing impairment. She’d also asked for headset and lighting accommodations, requests that can trigger an ADA interactive-process duty; neither got a timely response, so she bought both herself.

A performance review issued mid-stream still rated her work “valuable.” At a November 2021 meeting, her supervisor’s notes recorded her mentioning a brain injury, three write-ups, and a belief she had an EEOC case. Ten days later he recommended her termination; the chancellor approved it with no apparent knowledge of her condition, and she was fired December 3, 2021.

A Manager’s Notes Undercut His Own Affidavit

To win without direct evidence, a plaintiff must show the employer’s stated reason wasn’t real. The supervisor who recommended termination swore he didn’t know about her disability or accommodation requests, but his own write-up quoted her complaining about a lack of accommodation, and his notes referenced her brain injury. That gap between affidavit and paperwork was enough to send the claims to a jury.

The chancellor appears to have known nothing about the disability. That didn’t save the college. Under “cat’s paw” liability, a biased manager’s recommendation can create liability even when the decisionmaker is clean, and the court found enough evidence here. The plaintiff’s FMLA interference claim didn’t survive, only because it was barely briefed.

None of that means the write-ups were fabricated. It means a second set of eyes checking the file against itself before termination could have caught these gaps.

The Documentation Gaps That Sent This Case to Trial

A write-up that breaks from a recent rating isn’t fatal if the file explains why

An eleven-day gap between leave and a first-ever write-up wouldn’t defeat summary judgment alone, but paired with a “valuable” rating issued months later and no explanation for the shift, it became part of a troubling pattern. Documents don’t need to match word for word; they need a specific reason for the change, a new project, a new supervisor, a documented incident, so a swing from “valuable” to “written up” doesn’t read as unexplained.

A comment tying conduct to a disability may trigger the interactive process

When an employee connects a conduct issue to a disability, that can call for an interactive-process conversation, not just a note in a write-up. The interactive process doesn’t require a formal accommodation request form. A comment made in the middle of a disciplinary conversation may be enough to trigger it, and supervisors should be trained to recognize that moment and loop in HR before the write-up gets finalized, not after.

A clean final decisionmaker doesn’t automatically clear a process built on someone else’s recommendation

The chancellor’s ignorance didn’t matter once the court found evidence the recommending supervisor’s animus drove the termination. A senior leader who rubber-stamps a subordinate’s write-up needs to verify the reasons, not just sign it.

Paper trails only protect employers when every page agrees. Here, they didn’t, so a jury will decide what happened. A look at your documentation before a claim is filed beats the one opposing counsel runs after.