A very recent case from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appeals court over Texas) explains how a seemingly common condition in a stressed-out world is deserving of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protection.
Lawyer Sues Under ADA
Jamilah Way was a lawyer for the city of Missouri City, Texas, from August 2018 until her termination in January 2021. She sued for two separate violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): failure to reasonably accommodate her disability and retaliation for seeking such an accommodation.
Let’s take accommodation first. There are three questions that must be asked.
Questions for Accommodation
Question No. 1: Is her anxiety a covered ADA disability? Recall that the ADA defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that limits a major life activity such as caring for oneself, sleeping, and thinking. Here, there was evidence that, in August 2019, Way told her boss—the city attorney—that her anxiety caused her heart to beat more quickly; to physically tremble; to be short of breath; and for her thoughts to race. All of this made it a lot more difficult to perform activities most of us take for granted, such as falling asleep and eating. So now onto Question No. 2.
Question No. 2: Did the city know of her disability and the limitations flowing from it? Emails played a role in the answer.
Way to her boss, City Attorney E. Joyce Iyamu: “I am developing anxiety. (I have a doctors appoint [sic] scheduled for August 20, 2019, to address this.)”
Iyamu back to Way: “It is partly because you seem overwhelmed, as exhibited in the meeting earlier this week when you laid your head on the conference table and the state of the [work assignment you were given] on what was supposed to be the due date, that I feel like I have to step in. I don’t want you or any member of the team to feel like you are in an ocean without a life raft.”
And the following day, Way cried in front of Iyamu.
The 5th Circuit answered Question 2 this way:
Both the email and the tearful interaction could have communicated to Iyamu that Way was suffering from anxiety. Way “need not utter any magic words” to inform her employer of her disability. . . . Instead, she need only point to enough evidence in the record to allow a jury “to infer [the City’s] knowledge of the ‘limitations experienced by the employee as a result of [her] disability.’” . . . A reasonable jury considering Way’s evidence could make that inference.
Question No. 3: Did the city engage in a back and forth on a reasonable accommodation to her disability? Once limitations are established, then the next stage is to discuss a reasonable accommodation for those limitations. The failure of an employer to do so can be a violation of the ADA.
Here, Way asked Iyamu for clearly set work expectations, timelines for completion of tasks, and for these communications to be in writing. According to Way, the response was crickets. So, a jury will need to decide whether the city violated the reasonable accommodation portion of the ADA.
Questions for Retaliation
Not so with the retaliation claim. There are three questions to be asked:
Question No. 1: Did Way participate in a protected activity under the ADA? You bet. Asking for a reasonable accommodation to a disability is the essence of a protected activity.
Question No. 2: Did she suffer an adverse employment action? Yes on Question 2 as well. Getting fired is the ultimate adverse employment action.
Question No. 3: Does a causal connection exist between the protected activity and the adverse employment action? Here, a swing and a miss. Way asked for the reasonable accommodations in November 2019 but wasn’t fired until January 2021, a full 14 months later. That length of time negates a connection between the first and the second. Way v. City of Missouri City et al. (5th Cir., April 9, 2025).
Bottom Line
Note that while Way was specific in the description of her condition, other ADA cases were dismissed when the employee vaguely stated that “the past 11 months had been very difficult” or that, at a previous job, the employee was “sensitive to noise.” Note too that there might be a temptation to be dismissive of certain conditions, as Way claimed to be the case here. A word of advice: Resist this temptation. We never really know what other people are going through or how a condition affects them. Empathy is a good strategy when it comes to ADA claims.
Michael P. Maslanka is a professor at the UNT-Dallas College of Law. You can reach him at michael.maslanka@untdallas.edu.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on HR Laws, a brand of BLR, a division of Simplify Compliance. The original title is “Texas federal appeals court: Be anxious about ADA anxiety claims.“