Employee Was Fired for Not Turning In FMLA Paperwork Nobody Ever Asked Her For — Her Own HR Manager Later Testified That It Violated the ADA

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An employee at a Tennessee plastics packaging plant took approved personal time off and expected a normal return: show up, clock in, get back to work. Instead, she walked into a paperwork trap—one that ended with her termination after she couldn’t hand over medical forms she never requested in the first place.

That chain of events is at the center of an EEOC disability discrimination lawsuit that Magnera Corporation (formerly Berry Global) agreed to settle for $130,000, along with policy and training requirements detailed in the original post from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

She took approved time off, then got hit with a demand she didn’t see coming

The EEOC says the problem started in January 2022 at Berry Global’s Old Hickory, Tennessee location. The employee had taken personal time off that was approved. That matters, because personal time off isn’t the same as medical leave—and it shouldn’t automatically trigger the kind of medical documentation employers typically request under leave programs.

But when she came back, the company required her to produce a doctor’s release clearing her to return to work. In other words: before she could resume her job, she had to prove she was medically fit, even though she had used approved personal time off, not a medical leave request.

The employee did what a lot of workers would do in that moment—she went through the on-site process. Berry Global’s own certified physician assistant cleared her to return to work. That should have ended it.

HR didn’t accept the clearance and pushed FMLA paperwork anyway

Instead, the EEOC says the human resources manager stepped in and raised the stakes. Despite the on-site medical clearance, the HR manager demanded the employee complete Family and Medical Leave Act paperwork, even though she had not asked for medical leave.

FMLA forms aren’t quick or easy for many employees to obtain. They can require scheduling doctor appointments, paying out-of-pocket costs, waiting on offices to fill out paperwork, and navigating deadlines while you’re effectively in limbo at work.

And in this case, the demand wasn’t tied to a request the employee made. The EEOC’s account is straightforward: she didn’t request FMLA leave, but was told to produce the paperwork anyway.

When she could not produce the requested forms, the company fired her, according to the agency.

The deposition moment that made the company’s position harder to defend

Employers and employees fight over paperwork all the time, and those disputes often come down to policy wording and who documented what. What made this case stand out is what happened later, during legal proceedings.

The EEOC says the HR manager testified in a deposition that requiring the employee to produce a doctor’s release after approved personal time off violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, as amended. The HR manager also testified that the requirement violated the company’s own attendance policy.

That’s a rare kind of admission in workplace disputes: the person who enforced the requirement later confirming under oath that it broke the law and internal rules. It also helps explain why the EEOC framed the conduct not as a misunderstanding, but as disability discrimination involving a denial of accommodation and a termination tied to disability-related issues.

The EEOC’s position is that this kind of conduct violates the ADA, which prohibits disability discrimination and requires reasonable accommodations unless doing so would cause undue hardship to the employer.

The settlement comes with money—and a four-year compliance leash

Magnera Corporation, a global manufacturer of plastic packaging products headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, agreed to pay $130,000 and provide other relief to settle the EEOC’s lawsuit. The suit was filed as EEOC v. Berry Global, Inc., Case No. 3:24-cv-01085, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee after the EEOC first attempted to resolve the dispute through its administrative conciliation process.

The resolution isn’t just a check. A four-year consent decree includes a court-enforceable order that restrains the company from engaging in employment practices that discriminate based on disability in the future.

It also requires something that often gets skipped in real workplaces until a complaint is filed: the “interactive process.” Under the decree, the company must engage in the required interactive process to discuss reasonable accommodations as defined by the ADA.

And there’s a specific guardrail aimed at what happened here. The company is enjoined from terminating any employee for disability-related absence without considering a reasonable accommodation.

Training and paper trails: the part of this story workers fixate on

Even without a comment section attached, cases like this tend to draw the same practical reactions from workers: get everything in writing, save the emails, and don’t assume HR’s request is automatically valid just because it’s “policy.”

This settlement bakes that lesson into the remedy. Magnera must conduct annual training for human resources personnel and supervisory staff involved in employment decisions at the Old Hickory facility. The training has to cover measures to prevent disability discrimination, explain the ADA and its prohibition against discrimination based on disability or perceived disability, and cover how to respond to requests for accommodation.

The recurring theme is documentation—on both sides. The employee was terminated over missing paperwork. Now the company is required to formalize how it handles accommodation discussions and disability-related absences, the kinds of decisions that can spiral when managers treat medical forms as a gatekeeping tool rather than part of a careful, legally guided process.

In real life, that’s usually what workers want most: clarity about what’s required, why it’s required, and who decided it. When those answers shift—or when a company’s own medical clearance isn’t enough—employees can end up stranded between “approved time off” and “prove you’re allowed to return.”

A familiar workplace power move, but with unusually clear consequences

The EEOC praised Magnera’s willingness to resolve the lawsuit and implement measures intended to protect employees with disabilities. Faye Williams, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Memphis District Office, said, “The EEOC commends Magnera Corporation’s willingness and commitment toward resolving this lawsuit and implementing measures to protect the rights of its employees with disabilities.”

Delner Franklin-Thomas, director of the EEOC’s Memphis District Office, added, “Disability discrimination remains a persistent problem in the American workplace. We are pleased that Magnera Corporation’s measures will go a long way toward preventing such discrimination.”

For the employee at the center of the case, the story reads like a common workplace escalation: approved time off turns into a demand for medical clearance; medical clearance turns into a demand for a different set of forms; then the job disappears when the forms don’t arrive. The difference here is that the dispute didn’t end quietly—it ended with a federal lawsuit, a monetary settlement, and a multi-year order forcing the company to change how it handles disability-related issues at the facility.