An incidental finding from 2006 became the reason she lost her job, the worker claims
A Michigan transit agency fired an employee who worked on disability access, a week before a key medical appointment, a new lawsuit alleges.
The complaint, filed July 1, 2026 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, targets the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation, the Detroit-based agency known as SMART. It reads like a checklist of the moments where HR decisions can go wrong.
According to the filing, the worker joined SMART in January 2024 as a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist, a role focused on accessibility for blind and visually impaired individuals. She has a condition called drop foot and has worn an ankle-foot orthosis brace since 2006, the complaint says, and it never required an accommodation or affected her work.
The turning point, the filing alleges, came in June 2024, when she injured her hip. She told her supervisor, used crutches temporarily, and asked to work remotely while awaiting tests. The complaint says she kept HR updated throughout - an orthopedic consult, a scheduled MRI, and a diagnostic follow-up set for July 8, 2024.
Rather than support, the complaint alleges, she got pushback. It claims an HR specialist told her she "shouldn't be at the event on crutches" after she arranged a private driver to a work function. Days later, the filing says, a routine remote meeting was moved to a mandatory in-person session labeled "IQ training." No training took place, according to the complaint. Instead, the filing alleges, two HR representatives pressed her about her pre-employment physical and accused her of hiding a prior hip injury - something she says never happened.
The complaint says that accusation traced back to a 2006 MRI, done for the nerve issue behind her drop foot, that had noted an incidental, symptom-free finding. The filing states it was never a hip injury and never required treatment. When she tried to explain, the complaint says, one representative cut her off: "the decision has been made."
Her termination letter cited "failing to disclose information about your health history during a pre-employment medical examination," according to the filing. She alleges that reason was a pretext for disability discrimination and retaliation, and that SMART never discussed accommodations or leave before firing her. Her claims arise under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Michigan's Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act (PWDCRA).
For HR leaders, the case is a clean illustration of three recurring risks. The first is timing: under both the FMLA and the PWDCRA, firing an employee soon after they flag a medical need invites a claim that the two are connected. The second is anticipatory interference - the complaint frames the firing as a move to cut off leave before the worker ever became eligible, which the FMLA does not allow. The third is the interactive process, the back-and-forth about possible accommodations that disability law generally expects; the filing says that conversation never happened.
There is also a quieter point in how the pre-employment physical was used. The complaint alleges SMART relied on a decades-old, incidental medical finding to justify the firing. Under disability law, both the timing and the stated reason for a termination can come under scrutiny when an employee has recently disclosed a medical condition - which is why the record behind a firing decision tends to matter.
The allegations have not been tested in court, and no judge has ruled on any of the claims.
