When an employee discloses a disability or a medical restriction, California law does not simply ask whether the employer eventually provided an accommodation. It requires the employer to engage in a timely, good-faith interactive process, an actual back-and-forth about what is needed and what is possible.
Failing to hold that conversation is a separate violation from failing to accommodate. A surprising number of strong claims come down to an employer who never had the discussion at all.
What triggers the obligation
You do not need to use legal language or file paperwork. Telling a supervisor that a medical condition is affecting your ability to do part of your job is generally enough to put the employer on notice. From there, the obligation to engage belongs to them.
What the process should look like
A good-faith process usually involves discussing the limitation, exploring possible adjustments, requesting reasonable medical documentation where appropriate, and considering alternatives if the first idea does not work. What it should not look like is silence, a single form, or an immediate conclusion that nothing can be done.
Reasonable accommodation is broad
Accommodation can include modified schedules, equipment, changes to non-essential duties, remote work where the role permits, and a finite leave of absence. A leave can itself be a reasonable accommodation, which matters when an employee has exhausted other leave entitlements and is told there is nothing left.
Where it goes wrong
The most common failures we see: the request is acknowledged and then ignored; the employee is placed on unpaid leave instead of being accommodated in the role; the accommodation is granted and then quietly withdrawn; or discipline begins for performance issues that the requested accommodation would have addressed.
If this sounds familiar
Document what you asked for and when, keep copies outside your work account, and get the sequence reviewed. The strength of these claims often turns on a paper trail that is easy to preserve now and impossible to reconstruct later.