Employee’s Inability to work for Supervisor is not a “Disability”

In Higgins-Williams v. Sutter Med. Found, 237 Cal.App.4th 78 (2015), the court held that “an employee’s inability to work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress related to the supervisor’s standard oversight of the employee’s job performance does not constitute a mental disability under FEHA.”

This could have very possibly been a different result if the stress was related to the supervisor’s non-standard oversight of the employee’s job performance — for example, if the supervisor was retaliating against the employee, singled that employee out, and engaged in conduct to make it impossible for the employee to perform his/her job.