Oakland woman sues in disability bias case

An Oakland woman sued her former employer, a federal contractor that operates Job Corps centers nationwide, for disability discrimination Thursday, saying the company refused to let her use a cane after a knee injury and then fired her because she couldn’t stay on her feet for eight hours.

When Martha Daniels returned from a medical leave for knee surgery, she told her supervisors at Adams and Associates that her doctors had recommended no more than three hours of standing or walking in a workday, Daniels said in her lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco. She said the company’s human resources director responded, “Don’t you know that you work eight hours, not three hours?”

Daniels said she explained that she was asking for periodic rest breaks, not a shorter workday, but was told not to come to work the next day and was fired six weeks later. Daniels worked for the company from August 2009 to November 2014 as a supervisor and residential coordinator in dormitories for lowincome young women at the Treasure Island Job Corps Center.

“It was devastating to me to lose the job I loved,” Daniels, now 65 and working part time in another job, said in a statement released by her lawyers. Her suit seeks damages for lost wages and emotional distress, as well as punitive damages.

Adams and Associates, which operates out of Reno, did not respond to a request for comment. The company has a U.S. Labor Department contract to provide housing, academic counseling and job training to about 11,000 people ages 16 to 24 at 17 Job Corps sites across the country.

As a dorm supervisor, the suit said, Daniels earned the friendship and respect of her young students, going out of her way to help them fill out job applications and paying out of her own pocket for graduation parties for students who had no family members attending.

Daniels suffered a knee injury and underwent surgery for a torn meniscus in July 2013. When she returned to work four months later, the suit said, she asked a manager if she could use a cane while walking down the dorm floor for bed checks, but was told it was against company policy.

She continued working without a cane, then suffered a severe flareup in her knee in February 2014 and went on unpaid medical leave, her lawyers said. The lawyers said Daniels’ doctors cleared her to return to work in August 2014, with rest breaks and limits on standing, walking and lifting, but Adams never provided accommodations, and finally told her that the proposed restrictions would cause an “undue hardship” to the company.

Adams’ actions violated both federal and state laws that require employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” to disabled employees, the suit said.