Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DISCRIMINATION—DISABILITY—E.D. Okla.: Jury to decide if glass company violated ADA when it fired employee after extended leave, (May 8, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The company argued the employee violated its attendance policy when she delayed her return to work, but the court found it unclear whether the policy applied to her when she did not have a scheduled shift at that time.

A glass container manufacturing plant employee, who took an extended medical leave after her arm was broken in a domestic dispute, and who was fired for attendance policy violations after she delayed informing the company that she had been released to return to work, can proceed to trial on her ADA discriminatory discharge claim, a federal court in Oklahoma ruled, rejecting a magistrate judge’s recommendation and denying in part the company’s motion for summary judgment. Granting summary judgment on her failure-to-accommodate claim, however, the court found she failed to show there was a vacant position available to which she could have been reassigned at the time she was ready to return to work (Holbrook v. Anchor Glass Container Corp., No. 22-CV-229-FAB-JAR (E.D. Okla. May 6, 2026)).

Hired in 2010 as a line controller in the plant’s “cold end,” where glass bottles are packaged, the employee, during her tenure with the company, also worked in the hot end where glass bottles are formed. When her arm was broken in February 2020 during a domestic dispute, she was granted leave under the FMLA. She underwent one surgery in March and a second surgery in July, which led to an extension of her leave.

Extra cash. In October, she informed a hot end manager that she had been working for ride-hailing and food delivery services “for extra cash to help pay bills” while on leave. Although the manager claimed the employee also said she had no intention of coming back to work, she denied making this statement.

Return-to-work form. On January 13, 2021, her surgeon purportedly recommended that the employee return to work in the cold end of the plant because her “arm wasn’t strong enough” to work in the hot end. According to the employee, the doctor suggested that she take another week or two to heal before returning to work and intentionally omitted a release date on her return-to-work form.

Termination. Two weeks later, the employee informed the HR manager she was ready to return to work and emailed him a copy of her return-to-work form without a release date. When the HR manager told the employee the form was incomplete, she provided a new form on February 4 with a January 13 return-to-work date. Asserting that this showed the employee had been released to return to work 19 days before she provided her return-to-work form, the HR manager fired her the following day. “This decision,” the manager wrote, “is based on your failure to provide the requested and necessary information to substantiate your leave, resulting in failure to report off.”

Report and Recommendation. The employee subsequently sued, asserting various claims under Title VII, the FMLA, and the ADA, and a magistrate judge recommended that the court grant summary judgment against all claims. The employee objected to the magistrate’s recommendations only as to her ADA claims.

Failure to accommodate. In response to the employee’s assertion it failed to reasonably accommodate her disability, the company argued it had no reason to think she was disabled or needed an accommodation because her return-to-work form indicated she could return without any restrictions. The employee, however, claimed she could not lift over 50 pounds, which was required in her position, and thus, said the court, a jury could find she was disabled.

Even assuming she was disabled, the company next argued, she was not qualified to hold her job in the hot end, and she admitted there was no accommodation that would allow her to perform that job. In response, the employee claimed the company had a duty to explore reasonable accommodations because she was qualified for the cold end position she held prior to her disability. In the cold end, observed the court, bottles that have been made in the hot end are examined to make sure they meet specifications and are then boxed and shipped. Because it requires less heavy lifting, a jury could find she was qualified for a cold end job, which would have been a reasonable accommodation given that she had previously worked in that position.

Accommodation request. Although the court noted that there appeared to be a genuine dispute as to whether the employee requested a reasonable accommodation so as to trigger the interactive process, assuming she did request reassignment to the cold end, the magistrate determined that she failed to show there was a vacant position available. While the employee argued that the magistrate erred in failing to consider that the company refused to participate in good faith in the interactive process and that she was not required to show a vacant position existed, the court found this was incorrect.

Rather, the court explained, an employer is not required to engage in a futile interactive process where no reasonable accommodation is possible. Therefore, an employee must, at the time of the summary judgment proceeding, specifically identify and show the availability of vacant positions at or about the time of the request for reassignment. Because the employee failed to do so, the court adopted the magistrate’s findings and granted summary judgment against this claim.

Discriminatory discharge. In support of her discriminatory discharge claim, the employee argued that the magistrate erred when he found no evidence that she was terminated because she had a disability and that she asserted she was terminated by the HR manager because of her prior complaints against his friend. The magistrate, she contended, held an argument she made in support of her Title VII claim against her and erred in recommending summary judgment on her ADA claim solely because she cited a motive under Title VII.

Assuming she was disabled and that she qualified for the position she held, the court noted that she also had to show the company discriminated against her because of her disability. The employee pointed to the timing of her termination—three days after reaching out to the HR manager about returning to work—which she claimed gave rise to an inference she was fired because of her disability. Based on this temporal proximity, the court agreed that there could be an inference of discrimination based on disability.

Pretext. While the company argued that it fired the employee for violating its attendance policy because she intentionally delayed informing it that she had been released for work since January 13, the court found sufficient evidence of pretext to preclude summary judgment. Specifically, she claimed the attendance policy was incorrectly applied to her because she did not have any shifts scheduled during the time she was released and the time she provided the documentation, and thus she was not absent.

Agreeing that the attendance policy was unclear as to whether she had to provide a medical excuse for that two-week period of time if she did not have a shift scheduled, the court noted that while the policy stated that the company “must depend on a reliable work force that is consistently on the job when scheduled to work,” it also provided that “[s]hould you be disabled for three (3) days or more due to illness or injury, you are required to present a doctor’s release properly dated showing the dates of disability and certifying that you are now able to resume your regular duties.”

“How this provision would apply to [the employee], who was already on leave and was not scheduled to work, is not entirely clear,” said the court, finding that the “uncertainty of whether [she] needed to report her absences when she did not have a scheduled shift casts doubt on the policy being the real reason for her termination.” Accordingly, the court denied summary judgment against this claim.

The case is No. 22-CV-229-FAB-JAR.

Judge: Besosa, F.

Attorneys: Daniel E. Smolen (Smolen & Roytman) for Kathleen Holbrook. Jacob S. Crawford (McAfee & Taft) for Anchor Glass Container Corp.

Companies: Anchor Glass Container Corp.

Cases: DisabilityDiscrimination Discrimination Discharge OklahomaNews