Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, EMPLOYEE LEAVE—E.D. Pa.: Six-day temporal proximity between FMLA leave notification and termination creates triable issues, (Jun 12, 2026)

By Robert Margolis, J.D.

The employee’s daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor in late 2022.

Questions of fact as to causation and pretext arising because, among other things, the City of Lancaster Police Department terminated a former executive assistant six days after she requested intermittent leave under the FMLA, have doomed the city’s motion for summary judgment against her FMLA claim, a federal district court held. The court also denied the city’s motion as to her claims of disability discrimination under the ADA and Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (PHRA), rejecting the argument that the executive assistant was not herself disabled. She based her claims on the ADA’s “associational provision,” prohibiting an employer for discriminating against a qualified employee “because of the known disability of an individual with whom the qualified [employee] is known to have a relationship or association.” The court also declined to dismiss her request for prospective injunctive relief (Gallego-Feliciano v. City of Lancaster, No. 5:25-cv-04246-JMG (E.D. Pa. June 9, 2026)).

Care for daughter. The employee’s daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor in late 2022. The employee advised the Police Chief that her daughter would require surgery and ongoing medical treatment, and also told him she would need intermittent time off from work going forward to care for her daughter. On January 6, 2023, the Police Chief was notified by the employer’s third-party FMLA administrator that the employee had submitted a request for intermittent FMLA leave to care for her daughter. Prior to receiving the notice, the employer had been in discussion regarding potential changes to the employee’s job duties, but six days after the Police Chief received that notice about the formal request for intermittent leave, he decided to discontinue the efforts to revise the employee’s duties and instead eliminate her position. On February 1, 2023, the employee’s request for intermittent leave was approved, but six days later, she was terminated.

FMLA. The employer raised several arguments in its summary judgment motion, each of which the court found unpersuasive. First, the employer contended the claim failed because there was no evidence the employee had taken any leave before she was terminated. But as the court pointed out, she was not claiming retaliation for leave already taken, but instead that the employer acted adversely because she was likely to request additional leave to care for her daughter in the near future.

Next the employer contended the employee could not establish that her termination was causally related to the exercise of her FMLA rights. The employee pointed to several pieces of evidence, primarily the mere six days between when the Police Chief learned of her intermittent leave request and made the decision to eliminate her position. Such temporal proximity may be “unusually suggestive” of a retaliatory motive, the court noted. The employee also pointed out that prior to her requesting FMLA leave, the Police Chief was considering altering her duties; eliminating her position was not on the table until after she requested leave. In fact, the budget for 2023 had recently been approved without eliminating her position. All of this creates fact questions about causation that a jury must resolve, the court held.

The employee also provided sufficient evidence to raise a jury question as to pretext. The employer had shifting rationales for the termination: first that it was performance based and then that it was budgetary. Shifting rationales can provide evidence of pretext. In addition, evidence called into question both the proffered reasons. The employee had never been counseled about employment deficiencies, referred to HR, or warned that her position was in jeopardy. And as noted, the 2023 budget had already been approved and included the employee’s position.

ADA, PHRA. As with the FMLA claim, the employer made several arguments for granting summary judgment on the ADA and PHRA claims, and after the court noted the respective statutes’ similarities warranted analyzing the claims under them together, the court rejected each of the employer’s arguments.

First, the employer contended the employee’s claim fails because she herself is not disabled. But the employee had invoked the ADA’s “association provision,” prohibiting employers from discriminating against a qualified individual “because of the known disability of an individual with whom the qualified individual is known to have a relationship or association.” 42 U.S.C. § 12112(b)(4). As the employee pointed out, when she requested FMLA leave she made clear it was because of her daughter’s condition and her need to care for her daughter.

The employer’s remaining arguments about causation and pretext failed for the same reasons as they did as to the FMLA claim.

Injunction. In her amended complaint, the employee sought an injunction against the employer “engaging in further conduct in violation of employees’ rights under the statutes addressed above.” The employer argued that she thus improperly sought injunctive relief based solely on past harm, and that to the extent the employee requested prospective injunctive relief, she identified no ongoing or imminent harm. The court agreed with the employee, however, that equitable relief is available under the FMLA, and because one of the remedies she sought in the lawsuit was reinstatement to her former position, injunctive relief may be necessary should she need to care for her daughter in the future. Under the circumstances, it would thus be premature to dismiss her request for injunctive relief.

The case is No. 5:25-cv-0426-JMG.

Judge: Gallagher, J.

Attorneys: Anthony T. Bowser (Krevsky Bowser) for Rosa Gallego-Feliciano. Christine E. Munion (Santiago & Associates) for City of Lancaster and Richard Mendez.

Companies: City of Lancaster

Cases: EmployeeLeave DisabilityDiscrimination Discrimination Discharge PennsylvaniaNews