A three-day window to prove her medical leave, then a rehire door shut for five years
Amazon fired a warehouse worker over disputed medical-leave paperwork, then blocked her rehire for five years, a new lawsuit alleges.
The complaint, filed September 4, 2026, in the US District Court for the District of Nevada, comes from a former fulfillment associate at Amazon's LAS1 center in Henderson. It tells two connected stories: how Amazon handled her medical leave in 2024, and how it treated her when she later tried to return.
The worker has Bipolar II Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the filing says. In mid-2024, according to the complaint, a newly prescribed medication brought on severe lethargy, panic attacks and manic symptoms. A telehealth doctor told her not to work from June 19 through June 23, 2024, the complaint states. She requested leave and sent her provider notes to Amazon's Disability and Leave Services team.
Amazon then flagged the wording, format and signature on those documents and opened an investigation, the complaint alleges. In an August 2024 email, an investigator told her Amazon had contacted her provider and been told there was no record of the paperwork, according to the filing. The complaint also alleges Amazon's own verification records referred at one point to a July 19 visit rather than the June 19 appointment - which, in the worker's account, raises doubt about whether Amazon checked the right date.
The timeline is where the leave questions sharpen. The filing says Amazon gave her about three calendar days to produce verification sent straight from a provider - far short of the seven days the complaint says the law allows to fix a questioned form - and contacted her provider before she had a real chance to sort it out herself. She scrambled to get supplemental records sent, the complaint says, and was hospitalized in August 2024.
On September 3, 2024, Amazon approved several stretches of medical leave and short-term disability benefits, according to the filing. Three days later, it fired her for what the complaint calls "alleged falsification of leave documentation," leaning on wording it viewed as "atypical" and a document format it called "inconsistent" rather than any evidence she forged or altered a record.
The firing was not the end of it. The complaint alleges Amazon attached a five-year no-rehire label to the termination, turned down a fresh application on March 28, 2026, canceled a scheduled hiring appointment, and told her she could not reapply until September 2029. The worker says the no-rehire flag was applied automatically, with no individualized check of whether she could do the job. She also alleges that, while she was employed, an Amazon trainer told her mother - an Amazon worker at the time - that she was "slow" and "can't be on their team."
Her claims run under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Nevada Fair Employment Practices Act, covering both the 2024 firing and the later refusals to rehire. A related disability-discrimination and retaliation charge she filed in May 2026 is still pending with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
For HR teams, two threads stand out even before any court weighs in. First, the mechanics of leave paperwork carry real weight - how many days an employee gets to fix a questioned form, and whether you contact their doctor before that clock runs out, can become the heart of a case. Second, no-rehire lists are not quiet administrative housekeeping. The complaint's theory is that a disputed termination, baked into a multi-year rehire ban, can spin off fresh discrimination and retaliation claims each time the former employee applies and is turned away without a real look at their qualifications.
None of the allegations have been tested, and no court has ruled.
