Disability Discrimination Lawyer for Oakland County
You disclosed a diagnosis to your Oakland County employer and asked for something reasonable: a later start, a hybrid schedule, time off for treatment, a different workstation. Then your role was “restructured,” your review dropped a full rating, or you were told the accommodation had been “temporary.”
If the disclosure came first and you kept the emails, you may have a case. The first call is free and takes 15 minutes, and termination cases are on contingency. Watch one deadline above the others: Michigan’s PWDCRA only protects an accommodation request that was made in writing within 182 days of when you knew you needed it. The statewide ADA accommodation and retaliation page explains the doctrine. What follows is how it plays out in Oakland County offices, engineering centers, and hospitals.
How disability discrimination cases look in Oakland County
Oakland County’s economy runs on headquarters, engineering centers, hospitals, and finance. Its disability cases are white-collar more often than not, and they come with a paper trail.
The accommodation, then the “reorganization” at an Auburn Hills or Troy HQ
An engineer at Stellantis’s North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, a program manager at Magna or BorgWarner, or an analyst at Lear in Southfield discloses a condition and asks for a modified schedule. The accommodation is granted, grudgingly. Four months later a reorganization eliminates exactly one position on the team. The employer will say the decision was made at a level that never saw the request. Evidence: the request and approval emails, the org charts before and after, who absorbed your duties, and any message in which a manager called the accommodation an inconvenience.
Nurses with restrictions at Corewell Royal Oak, Ascension Providence, and Henry Ford West Bloomfield
Corewell Health’s William Beaumont University Hospital in Royal Oak is the county’s largest single employer site, and with Corewell Troy, Ascension Providence in Southfield and Novi, and Henry Ford West Bloomfield, the hospital systems account for a large share of Oakland County accommodation disputes. The recurring one: a nurse returns with a lifting or standing limit and is told the system has light duty only for injuries that happened at work. That distinction is not in the ADA. Evidence: the transitional-duty policy, the open postings in the weeks you were on unpaid leave, and the coworker with a work injury who got the desk assignment.
Mental-health accommodations in Troy and Southfield offices
Flagstar and Comerica staff, Kelly Services employees, and the insurance and finance offices along Big Beaver and Northwestern Highway generate a steady stream of cases about anxiety, depression, ADHD, and PTSD. The request is usually modest: two remote days, a start time shifted by an hour, written instead of verbal instructions. The denial usually cites “consistency” or the return-to-office mandate. Then attendance becomes an issue. Evidence: the request, the policy and every exception granted to others, the attendance record with each absence tied to treatment, and the reviews before disclosure.
Engineering centers in Farmington Hills and Rochester Hills
Nissan Technical Center, Bosch, and FANUC America employ engineers and technicians who spend part of the week in labs, vehicle bays, and test cells. A hearing, vision, mobility, or back-related restriction is met with “the job requires lab time” without asking whether the lab time could be scheduled, shared, or equipped differently. Evidence: the actual job description versus the described one, how much lab time the role really involved, and whether the employer ever proposed an alternative.
The law that applies
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act covers employers with 15 or more employees, which is nearly every employer named above, and requires an EEOC charge within 300 days at the Detroit Field Office before suit. Compensatory and punitive damages are capped at $50K–$300K by employer size. Michigan’s Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act, MCL 37.1101, reaches employers of any size, needs no charge, carries a three-year limitations period, and has no cap.
The PWDCRA also carries the trap most Oakland County employees walk into. Under MCL 37.1210(18), the employer’s duty to accommodate under state law arises only if you gave written notice of the need for accommodation within 182 days after you knew or reasonably should have known you needed one. Professionals who handled the request in a Teams call or a one-on-one often have nothing in writing. If that is you, send the email now. The window may still be open, and a written request after a denial still counts as protected activity.
Beyond that: both statutes bar retaliation for requesting, whether or not you qualified. The ADA covers you if the employer regarded you as impaired, which is how the “she seemed off after her diagnosis” cases get pleaded. Medical inquiries of current employees are limited to job-related, business-necessity questions. Additional leave after FMLA is exhausted can be an accommodation when it is finite. Reassignment to a vacant position is the ADA’s accommodation of last resort, but the employer does not get to call a demotion an accommodation when you asked for something else. And if the underlying condition came from a work injury, MCL 418.301(13) separately prohibits firing you for the compensation claim.
| Claim | Who’s covered | Deadline | Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADA, Title I (federal) | 15+ employees | EEOC charge within 300 days; suit within 90 days of right-to-sue | Back and front pay; compensatory and punitive capped $50K–$300K; attorney fees |
| PWDCRA, MCL 37.1101 (Michigan) | 1+ employees | Written notice of need within 182 days; lawsuit within 3 years | Back and front pay; emotional distress uncapped; fees |
| FMLA (when the leave was for your condition) | 50+ employees within 75 miles; 12 months and 1,250 hours | 2 years (3 if willful); straight to court | Lost pay plus equal liquidated damages; fees; no emotional distress |
| ADA/PWDCRA retaliation | Same as above | Same as above | Same as above, plus punitive under the ADA for malice or reckless indifference |
The full calendar is on Michigan employment claim deadlines.
Where your Oakland County disability discrimination case gets filed
State claims file at the Oakland County Circuit Court, 1200 N. Telegraph Road, Pontiac. Federal ADA claims file in the Eastern District of Michigan, whose main courthouse is the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit. An Oakland County employer sued on state claims alone generally cannot move the case to federal court; add an ADA count and it can.
For an Oakland County professional, that tradeoff usually comes down to two things. First, damages. A PWDCRA case has no cap on emotional distress, and a mid-career engineer or nurse manager with a long earnings history can have a front-pay figure that dwarfs the federal caps anyway, so the cap matters less than people assume. Second, doctrine. The PWDCRA’s definition of disability excludes conditions related to your ability to perform the job, which employers argue whenever the accommodation touched an essential duty; the ADA has no such carve-out and expressly requires reassignment. When the case turns on reassignment or “regarded as,” the federal count earns its place. The Oakland County employment lawyer page describes the Pontiac jury pool and how the 6th Circuit handles employment dockets.
Whether you were at a supplier HQ in Troy, Ascension Providence in Southfield, or a tech center in Farmington Hills, the courthouse is the same.
The Oakland County pattern: accommodation granted, then “reorganized” out
The Oakland County version of accommodation retaliation rarely looks like a denial. Sophisticated employers know a flat “no” is dangerous. So the request is approved, sometimes with a note that it will be “revisited,” and the retaliation arrives later wearing different clothes: a reorganization, a role consolidation, a “skills mismatch” in a leveling exercise, a return-to-office mandate with no exceptions.
Three things make these cases winnable. The first is timing relative to the accommodation, not the disclosure. If the reorg followed the accommodation by weeks, the inference is strong. If it followed by a year, you need more. The second is selection. In a genuine reorganization, several positions go. When the “reorganization” is one seat, and it is the accommodated employee’s, the label does not hold. The third is the revocation. Employers who granted remote work as an accommodation cannot rescind it because the CEO wants everyone back; a change in preference is not undue hardship, and a revocation without a new interactive process is a failure to accommodate all over again.
Preserve the approval email, the calendar of every meeting about your role, and the messages from your manager complaining about coverage. Then request the personnel file. The internal notes about “flexibility concerns” tend to live there.
What to do in the first 72 hours
If your position vanished while you were out, read accommodation denied, now fired. If the leave was FMLA, see fired after asking for FMLA leave.
- Send the written request, or re-send it. Email HR and your manager naming the limitation and the accommodation you need; under MCL 37.1210(18) the PWDCRA duty depends on written notice within 182 days, and a Teams call does not count.
- Save everything to a personal account tonight. Your accommodation approval, the reviews before and after disclosure, the reorganization announcement, and the messages about your schedule, before IT disables your login.
- Request the personnel file in writing. Bullard-Plawecki gives you the right to review it, and Oakland County HR departments keep the accommodation folder inside it.
- Ask your provider for a functional letter. One page stating the limitation, the accommodation that addresses it, and the expected duration is what the law lets the employer ask for and what a jury believes.
- Hold the severance agreement. Twenty-one days is enough time to have the release reviewed, and the release is what the employer is paying for.
- Do not quit, and do not agree to a “mutual separation.” Both convert a clean termination claim into a harder one, and both give up the unemployment you are entitled to.
Oakland County disability discrimination questions
My Troy employer says my remote-work accommodation was temporary and is ordering me back to the office. Can they revoke it?
Not simply because the policy changed. An accommodation can be adjusted when the disability, the job, or the hardship changes, and only after the employer talks with you about alternatives. A company-wide return-to-office mandate is a preference, not an undue hardship, especially if you performed the role remotely for months. Ask for the reason in writing and respond in writing; that exchange becomes the case.
My Auburn Hills employer eliminated my position in a reorganization a few months after I started an accommodation. Is that discrimination?
It may be. The question is whether the reorganization explanation holds. Who else was cut, who absorbed your work, when the decision was documented, and what your manager said about your accommodation all matter. A reorganization that removes a single accommodated employee, or that shifts your duties to a colleague without restrictions, is the kind of fact pattern the ADA and PWDCRA were written for.
My Oakland County employer has fewer than 15 employees. Do I have any disability claim at all?
Yes, under Michigan law. The federal ADA stops at 15 employees, but the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act covers Michigan employers with one or more employees. You would file in Oakland County Circuit Court within three years, with no EEOC step. The catch is the state statute’s written-notice rule: your accommodation request must have been in writing within 182 days of when you knew you needed it.
Do I have to accept a demotion my employer is calling an accommodation?
Not when a reasonable accommodation exists in your current job. Reassignment to a lower position is a last resort under the ADA, appropriate only when you cannot be accommodated where you are. An employer that skips straight to a pay cut, or moves you to a role you never asked for while leaving your job open, has not met its obligation. Take the position under protest if you must, and document that you asked for alternatives.
My manager said I “didn’t seem disabled” and then started treating me differently. Is that a claim?
It can be. The ADA protects employees whom the employer regards as impaired, whether or not the impairment limits you much, and it prohibits treating you worse because of that perception. Comments doubting your diagnosis, followed by closer monitoring or a sudden performance plan, are the evidence. Write down the comment, who heard it, and the date, and save any message where the doubt was put in writing.
Talk to a disability discrimination lawyer who takes Oakland County cases
If you asked an Oakland County employer for an accommodation and your career changed direction afterward, call (313) 701-2448 or book a free 15-minute case evaluation. Bring the request, the approval or denial, and the timeline. I will tell you whether it is a case.
Warren Astbury. Harvard Law School, J.D. 2009. Fifteen years, more than 50 trials to verdict, employees only. I have never represented an employer and will not start with yours.
The same practice covers the neighboring counties: see the Wayne County, Macomb County, and Washtenaw County disability discrimination pages.