Fired With A Medical Condition

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Maryland

A software engineer colleague was a solidly dependable and productive employee for the first 4-5 years working at our company.

Over the last year or so, his performance declined while he simultaneously began to show signs of some sort of muscular/neurological problem.

On the exact same day he was fired for poor performance he was finally diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

He doesn't deny that his performance declined. But he explained that due to the symptoms of the disease he was getting very little sleep and he was constantly exhausted, hence the poor work output.

The Parkinson symptoms have progressed to the point that he no longer believes he is employable, though Social Security seems to have denied his application for disability benefits apparently on the grounds that he is not yet disabled enough.

Does he have any legal claim against his company?

An employer does not have to excuse poor performance just because there is a medical condition at the root. He was fired before he was diagnosed or had an opportunity to inform his employer about the problem or request accomodations. His company has no obligation to reconsider the firing now that he has a diagnosis.

Agreed.

The company cannot be held responsible for an employee's disease that it knew nothing about.

Thank you both for your responses.

As best I understand, he DID inform his manager (who is now no longer working for the company) that his work WAS being affected by a medical condition - he just didn't know the precise nature of the medical condition until the exact day he was fired.

Can it really be true that he might have a legal claim if he had been diagnosed one day sooner or if he had been fired one day later?

Most likely, no, he would not have a legal claim even so.

An undiagnosed medical condition wouldn't fall under the ADA - that requires a diagnosis. He would also have to be able to perform his job to acceptable performance levels with a reasonable accomodation. Asking the employer to lower the performance expectations would not be a reasonable accomodation. Time off under FMLA for diagnosis and treatment would of course be reasonable, but at this point it's unknown whether he will eventually be able to do his job again with treatment.

But even if he knew about the disease all along, and informed the company about it, if he was unable to meet the standards, and there was no reasonable accomodation that could help him, then it would still be legal for them to fire him.

Thank you again for your time.