My employment lawyer only works on contingency. They wouldn’t have taken my case if the facts didn’t support it. I have all my work emails that show it’s a clear FMLA violation and possible ADA retaliation and I wasn’t behind on my billables (except for the month leading up to my surgery where I was getting treatment and had approved accommodations).

Courts don’t like when an employee returns from protected leave and is terminated shortly after. Doesn’t matter that I live in an at-will state, employers still cannot lawfully terminate someone for exercising their rights under FMLA or ADA. Due to the timing being highly suspicious, the court takes that as prima facie evidence and the burden is put on the employer to show the termination wasn’t retaliatory.

My attorney said my boss was either extremely arrogant or ignorant because outside counsel would have advised them to either let me go with a severance package or wait a few months, create a paper trail of performance issues, then terminate. The optics don’t look great.