Caught Sleeping on Shift, Then Citing a Diagnosis: Why the Timing Killed This ADA Claim

A hospital tech got caught sleeping on the overnight shift. Blaming a diabetes medication for it, only after getting caught, didn’t turn her firing into disability discrimination.

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TL;DR: An imaging technologist was fired for sleeping during her overnight shift and sued for disability discrimination and interference with medical leave. She never mentioned her diabetes or asked for an accommodation until she was already under investigation. The Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the hospital: the duty to accommodate usually doesn’t start until an employee actually asks.

📄 Read the Third Circuit’s opinion here.

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The Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment for a hospital system on every claim brought by an employee fired for sleeping on her overnight shift. She blamed a diabetes medication change. The problem: nobody at the hospital knew about the diabetes, or any request for help, until she was already under investigation.

A Warning About Absences, Then Nothing More From Her

About a year into the job, she was reprimanded for calling out too often. The write-up spelled out how to ask for a disability accommodation or medical leave. She never used it.

Five months later, a coworker reported her for sleeping on shift, texting during work, and failing to restock supply rooms. Hospital policy banned sleeping on duty, on pain of termination. Her manager investigated and met with her within two weeks.

The Diabetes Came Up Only After She Got Caught

She denied falling asleep but admitted she “might have shut her eyes” because of dry eye from a new diabetes medication that was also making her tired. That was the first time she had ever mentioned the diagnosis, which she had actually had since before she was hired. She emailed that she was “praying” for improvement, but never asked for an accommodation or leave. The hospital fired her shortly after.

She sued under the ADA, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (PHRA), and the FMLA. The district court granted the hospital summary judgment on all of it, and the Third Circuit affirmed.

Why the Timing Sank Every Claim

Both statutes require the employee to flag the issue. The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation once the employer knows one is needed, whether through a direct request or a need that’s obvious from the circumstances, unless providing it would be an undue hardship. The FMLA requires the employee to ask for foreseeable leave and give advance notice, or notice as soon as practicable if the need wasn’t foreseeable. Nothing here was obvious, and no notice was given: dry eye and fatigue don’t scream diabetes, and nothing in the record hinted at either before that meeting. An employer need not hunt for a possible accommodation request that was never made.

The employer came out clean here because its paper trail was clean too: a reprimand spelling out how to ask for help, a documented investigation, and no earlier hint of a disability anywhere in the file. That kind of record doesn’t happen by accident, so it’s worth checking whether it exists today.

A Vague Comment About Medication Isn’t a Request for Anything

Mentioning fatigue or a medication change doesn’t, by itself, trigger a duty to accommodate. Have the manager write down the exchange the same day, verbatim where possible, rather than a summary of what the manager thinks it meant, since specifics hold up better than characterizations. It’s also fine, and often smart, for a manager to just ask the employee directly whether they need anything, rather than waiting to see if a formal request ever materializes.

What a Mid-Investigation Disclosure Does and Doesn’t Do

This court treated a disability disclosure that came only once the investigation had already started as too late to help her case. When a health issue comes up mid-investigation, note the date and substance of that comment alongside the misconduct timeline, not just the comment itself. That disclosure can also trigger a duty to accommodate going forward, so it belongs in front of whoever handles ADA requests, not filed away as just an investigation note.

Neutral Safety Rules Beat Sympathetic Excuses, With Documentation Behind Them

A rule against sleeping on duty, applied evenly, will usually outweigh a disability-based excuse offered after the fact. That only works if the investigation itself is documented with dates and quotes as it happens, not reconstructed afterward.

No employer can accommodate a condition it was never made aware of. That’s the whole case in one line: the diabetes was real, the medication change was real, and none of it reached anyone at the hospital until the investigation was already underway.