Approved accommodations sat undelivered for six weeks before the firing
A 22-year Wells Fargo employee alleges the bank fired him one day after he told HR his approved disability accommodations had never arrived.
The federal complaint, filed September 14, 2026, in the Western District of Texas, names Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. as the defendant. The employee, who held the title of Senior Assistant Vice President, brings claims of disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, and retaliation under the ADA Amendments Act and the Texas Labor Code.
According to the filing, the employee joined Wells Fargo in February 2003 as an Internal SLS Help Desk Associate. Over more than two decades, he earned multiple promotions, attended underwriting school, passed his qualifying exam, and rose to senior underwriter - a role later retitled Senior Assistant Vice President. His most recent promotion came in 2024, the complaint states.
The filing alleges the employee has ADHD and a chronic hip condition diagnosed in 2016, both of which affect his ability to focus, his physical mobility, and his capacity to sit for long stretches. Before the pandemic, the complaint says, Wells Fargo provided accommodations including multiple computer screens, written standard operating procedures, and a large ergonomic chair.
When employees returned to the office in November 2024, the complaint alleges, the employee found all his previously approved accommodations had been removed. Delays and unclear communication around the accommodations process followed, the filing states.
The complaint alleges Wells Fargo placed the employee on a formal performance improvement plan in November 2024 after three "fails" - the filing's term for data-entry errors in the daily file review process. According to the complaint, Wells Fargo's own quality metric policy called for only an informal review at that threshold, making the formal plan a departure from its written standards. The filing alleges the employee was singled out for discipline while similarly situated colleagues without disabilities were not.
The complaint also describes ongoing physical hardship. The employee was trapped in the building's elevator on at least eight separate occasions, sometimes for an hour or more in the dark, without adequate management response, the filing alleges. His chronic hip pain prevented him from using stairs, leaving the elevator as his only option. The complaint alleges his supervisor was consistently dismissive of these incidents. When the employee asked Wells Fargo to fix the elevator, the filing states the bank's only proposal was to move him to the first floor - a measure the complaint calls "inadequate and exclusionary" because it would have isolated him from colleagues he relied on.
On or around January 30, 2025, according to the complaint, HR notified the employee that his accommodation requests had been approved effective January 27, 2025. The approved items included an ergonomic chair, Microsoft Teams transcription software, and a monitor with glare screens larger than 34 inches. The filing states the transcription software would help him capture updates from daily meetings lasting two to three hours, the larger monitor would support his focus needs, and the chair would ease his chronic hip pain during extended sitting.
Despite the formal approval, the complaint alleges Wells Fargo never delivered any of the accommodations. From the approval date through his termination on March 11, 2025 - more than six weeks - the employee did not receive a single approved item, the filing states. His supervisors instructed him to ask colleagues for help understanding meeting updates, instructions, and policy changes, according to the complaint, but both colleagues and his supervisor repeatedly dismissed those requests.
On March 10, 2025, the complaint states, the employee contacted HR to report that his approved accommodations had still not been provided and that management had taken no meaningful action.
The next day, March 11, 2025, Wells Fargo terminated his employment, the filing alleges. That gap - approximately 24 hours - is central to the retaliation claim.
Wells Fargo cited performance failure as the basis for the termination, but the complaint alleges this was pretextual. The filing notes the employee became technically eligible for termination under the bank's quality metric policy in October 2024 upon his fifth fail, but the bank chose to keep him on at that point. From November 2024 through March 2025, the complaint alleges, the employee recorded no additional quality metric fails. The filing further alleges that colleagues in the same position with comparable or greater numbers of fails kept their jobs.
The complaint brings three causes of action: disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, and retaliation, all under both the ADA Amendments Act and the Texas Labor Code. The filing states the employee dual-filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC and the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division (EEOC Charge No. 451-2025-03000) and received his right-to-sue notice on June 18, 2026.
He seeks back pay, reinstatement or front pay, compensatory damages including emotional distress, punitive damages, attorneys' fees, and costs.
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has ruled on the claims.
