A 19-year veteran says her shoulder injury cost her promotions - then her job
A 19-year Toyota veteran says the carmaker stalled her career, then pushed her out on disability leave - all over a shoulder injury.
Angela Watkins, a 52-year-old Team Leader at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama, sued the company on May 1, 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. She alleges Toyota violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by denying her promotions, retaliating against her internal complaints, and placing her on involuntary short-term disability leave in March 2025.
Watkins has worked at Toyota's Huntsville-area plant since August 2006. According to the complaint, she has never received a written disciplinary action and was once featured in a Women in Manufacturing publication.
In July 2014, the filing says, she suffered a permanent right shoulder injury while reaching into equipment to change a cutting tool. After surgery and a 2020 Functional Capacity Evaluation, she was placed on permanent lifting restrictions. Toyota's own safety policy already required a two-person lift for anything over 20 pounds - the same threshold as her restrictions.
For four years, Watkins says, she performed her assigned roles successfully under those restrictions. She trained Group Leaders, Team Leaders, and Team Members in Toyota's 3 Pillar system. Her supervisors told her she was excelling on a new Differential Line in early 2025, the complaint alleges.
The promotion piece is where the case sharpens for HR. In 2021, Watkins alleges, Manager John Sharp told her he would not recommend her for Group Leader because of her shoulder injury. In 2022, she says she passed every assessment, then received an email rejection within 30 minutes of leaving her interview - for a "conflict resolution" reason that, per the complaint, never came up in the interview itself. A Toyota HR representative, Brian Williams, allegedly told her he believed she had done well and could not account for the reason given.
The most damaging allegation is directed at Senior Manager Mike Hogan. Watkins says Hogan told another employee, in front of two witnesses, that he could "score her so low that she will never get out of the pool." According to the filing, Hogan was the same decision-maker scoring her promotion applications.
Watkins escalated through Toyota's Speak Up Line and Ethics Hotline in 2022, 2023, and October 2024. She filed an EEOC charge on May 28, 2025. The October 2024 complaint, she alleges, triggered an internal investigation in which Hogan gave investigators a false reason for moving her off the 3 Pillar Team - that the project had ended. The complaint says it had not, and that the team was still staffed as of August 2025.
Then came March 6, 2025. After a tote fell from a rack and struck Watkins on her right shoulder while she worked the Differential Line, Toyota's clinic reaffirmed her 2020 restrictions. HR ran a position assessment - but, the filing alleges, only against assembly jobs she had not held since 2014. Hogan sent a letter saying there was "nothing" in his area for her. Toyota placed her on involuntary short-term disability leave the same day. Her role went to a younger male colleague described in the complaint as not having her restrictions.
For HR leaders, the failure-to-accommodate count is the centerpiece. The complaint alleges Toyota skipped every step of the ADA's interactive process: no conversation about accommodations, no contact with her physicians, no consideration of alternative roles - including an open Team Leader spot on the 3 Pillar Team that opened the same day she was removed. Toyota's Leave and Disability Manager, Cheryl Clayton, has since told Watkins she cannot return unless her physicians lift her permanent restrictions, the filing states.
Watkins is seeking back pay, reinstatement or front pay, compensatory and punitive damages, and a court order requiring mandatory ADA retraining for all TMMAL managers, supervisors, and HR personnel.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Toyota has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled on any of Watkins's claims.
