A Texas employer can sometimes fire you while you are on medical leave after an injury, but the employer cannot lawfully fire you because you used protected FMLA leave, requested a reasonable accommodation for a qualifying disability, or engaged in protected workers’ compensation activity. Whether your job is protected depends on the law that applies, your employer, your eligibility, your medical condition, your work restrictions, and the stated reason for the employment decision.
Texas generally follows the employment-at-will rule. Medical leave does not create automatic protection from every termination. An employer may still terminate you for a lawful reason that is unrelated to protected leave or disability rights, such as a genuine reduction in force, documented misconduct, or elimination of your position.
The key question is not simply whether you were injured. The key question is whether your leave, medical restrictions, accommodation request, or workers’ compensation activity was legally protected and whether the employer acted because you exercised those rights.
Chavez Law Firm handles employment law and personal injury matters in El Paso, Texas. That combination can matter when an injury and a workplace dispute overlap.
Learn more about employment issues after an injury:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/employment-issues-after-a-personal-injury/
Can a Texas Employer Fire You While You Are on Medical Leave? 
A Texas employer may be able to fire you while you are on medical leave if the reason is lawful and unrelated to protected leave, disability discrimination, retaliation, or another legal protection.
Texas is generally an employment-at-will state. Unless a contract, statute, or another recognized legal protection applies, an employer can usually end the employment relationship for a lawful reason or for no particular reason. The employer still cannot use an illegal reason.
Medical leave can change that analysis. If your absence is protected under the Family and Medical Leave Act, your employer generally cannot count protected FMLA leave against you or punish you for requesting or using it. If you have a disability covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, your employer may also have a duty to consider a reasonable accommodation.
Protected medical leave can limit an employer’s ability to use your absence against you, but it does not block every lawful termination.
If your employer says you were fired for attendance, performance, misconduct, or restructuring, compare that explanation with the written record. Look at whether protected absences were counted against you, whether your performance record changed after you requested leave, and whether the stated reason for the decision changed over time.
Learn more about employment law services:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/el-paso-employment-law-attorneys/
Enrique Chavez
Texas Trial Attorney
Protecting Your Rights
When May FMLA Protect Your Job After an Injury?
The Family and Medical Leave Act can provide eligible employees with up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave during a 12-month period for a qualifying serious health condition. Your injury does not have to happen at work to qualify.
An injury may qualify when it meets the FMLA definition of a serious health condition. Depending on the circumstances, this may include an injury that requires inpatient care, surgery, continuing treatment, or a period when you cannot perform your job because of the medical condition.
For most employees, FMLA eligibility generally requires that:
- You work for a covered employer.
- You have worked for that employer for at least 12 months.
- You have at least 1,250 hours of service during the 12 months before the leave begins.
- You work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles of your worksite.
Private-sector employers generally must have at least 50 employees for at least 20 workweeks in the current or previous calendar year to be covered by the FMLA. Public agencies and public or private elementary and secondary schools are covered employers regardless of the total number of employees, although individual employee eligibility requirements still matter.
If you are eligible and your leave qualifies, your employer generally must continue group health coverage under the same conditions that would have applied if you had continued working. When FMLA leave ends, you generally have the right to return to the same job or an equivalent job with equivalent pay, benefits, and other employment terms.
FMLA protection does not erase unrelated performance problems or prevent a termination that would have happened for a lawful reason even if you had not taken leave. Records often become central to determining whether protected leave affected the decision.
Useful records can include:
- FMLA eligibility and rights notices
- Medical certifications
- Leave approval notices
- Attendance records
- Performance reviews
- Disciplinary notices
- Emails and text messages about your leave
- Documents showing the reason for termination
Read more about Family and Medical Leave rights:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/family-and-medical-leave/
– Steve Hendrix
– Adriana Solis
– Luis Amador
– Maria Terrazas
Can the ADA Protect You When FMLA Does Not?
The Americans with Disabilities Act may protect you if your injury results in a disability covered by the law and you are qualified to perform the essential functions of your job with or without a reasonable accommodation.
The ADA generally applies to employers with 15 or more employees. A covered employer may have to provide a reasonable accommodation unless doing so would create an undue hardship.
A reasonable accommodation after an injury may include:
- A modified work schedule
- Time away for medical appointments
- Changes to nonessential job duties
- Equipment or workspace changes
- Temporary work restrictions that allow you to perform the essential functions of the job
- A finite period of unpaid leave when it is reasonable and does not create an undue hardship
- Reassignment to a vacant position in some circumstances
Your employer does not always have to provide the exact accommodation you request. If more than one accommodation is effective, the employer may choose another effective option.
This issue can become especially important when you are not eligible for FMLA or when you have used all available FMLA leave. The end of 12 weeks of FMLA leave does not automatically mean that your employer can terminate you without considering the ADA. Additional unpaid leave or another accommodation may still need to be evaluated if you have a qualifying disability and the accommodation would not create an undue hardship.
Indefinite leave is different. The ADA does not require an employer to provide leave with no reasonably identifiable end point when the employee cannot say whether or when a return to work will be possible.
Learn more about disability rights and reasonable accommodation:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/americans-with-disabilities-act/
What If Your Injury Happened at Work?
A workplace injury can raise separate workers’ compensation and retaliation issues.
Texas Labor Code Chapter 451 generally prohibits an employer from discharging or otherwise discriminating against an employee because the employee:
- Filed a workers’ compensation claim in good faith
- Hired a lawyer to represent the employee in a workers’ compensation claim
- Instituted or caused a qualifying workers’ compensation proceeding to be instituted in good faith
- Testified or was about to testify in a qualifying workers’ compensation proceeding
A firing after a workplace injury is not automatically retaliation. The central issue is whether the employer acted because of protected workers’ compensation activity.
Facts that may deserve closer review include:
- A supervisor complained about your workers’ compensation claim.
- Discipline began soon after you filed a claim.
- Your employer pressured you to abandon a claim or return before your medical restrictions allowed it.
- The reason given for termination conflicts with written records.
- The employer treated workers who did not engage in protected activity differently in similar circumstances.
- Protected workers’ compensation activity was discussed in connection with the decision to discipline or fire you.
If your employer does not carry Texas workers’ compensation insurance, different rules may apply to the injury itself. A lawyer can review which employment and injury claims may be available based on the employer’s coverage and the facts.
What Are Warning Signs of a Potentially Unlawful Medical Leave Termination?
No single fact proves that a medical leave termination was unlawful. A pattern of events may provide more useful evidence than one isolated incident.
Warning signs can include:
- Your employer approved protected leave and then counted the same absences against you.
- You were disciplined for missing work during approved FMLA leave.
- A supervisor complained that your injury, treatment, or medical appointments were creating problems.
- Your performance record changed sharply after you disclosed medical restrictions.
- You requested a reasonable accommodation and were fired without a meaningful response to the request.
- Your employer demanded that you return without restrictions even though an effective reasonable accommodation may have allowed you to work.
- Your employer gave different reasons for your termination at different times.
- Employees with similar performance or attendance records were treated differently.
- You were disciplined soon after filing a workers’ compensation claim or requesting protected leave.
- Emails, text messages, or meeting notes connect the employment decision to your medical leave, disability, or workers’ compensation activity.
Timing can matter, but timing alone usually does not answer the legal question. The surrounding records, decision-makers, policies, comparator evidence, and stated reasons for the employer’s action can all matter.
What Should You Do If You Are Fired During Medical Leave?
Preserve records as soon as possible. Employment disputes often depend on documents created before and after the termination.
Keep copies of records that you may lawfully possess, including:
- Leave requests
- FMLA notices
- Medical certifications
- Doctor’s work restrictions
- Accommodation requests
- Responses from human resources or management
- Employee handbooks
- Attendance policies
- Performance reviews
- Disciplinary notices
- Work schedules
- Pay records
- Termination letters
- Emails
- Relevant text messages
- Workers’ compensation documents
Write a timeline while the events are fresh. Include the date of the injury, when you notified your employer, when you requested leave, who received the request, what restrictions your doctor gave you, when discipline began, what managers said about your absence or restrictions, and what reason the employer gave for the termination.
Do not alter records. Do not take confidential company materials that you have no right to possess. Save lawful copies of your own employment records and communications.
If your employer gives you a severance agreement, release, resignation form, or settlement document, review what rights the document may affect before you sign it. Employment claims can also have filing deadlines, so waiting too long can affect your available options.
Learn more about wrongful termination:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/wrongful-termination/
How Can an El Paso Employment Lawyer Evaluate a Medical Leave Firing?
An El Paso employment lawyer can review whether FMLA, ADA, workers’ compensation retaliation law, or another employment protection may apply to your medical leave firing.
The review may include:
- Whether your employer was covered by the FMLA
- Whether you met FMLA eligibility requirements
- Whether your medical condition qualified for protected FMLA leave
- Whether your injury may qualify as a disability under the ADA
- Whether you requested or needed a reasonable accommodation
- Whether the employer engaged in the accommodation process
- Whether protected absences were counted against you
- Whether workers’ compensation activity was connected to the employment decision
- Whether the employer’s stated reason is consistent with the written record
- Whether other employees were treated differently in similar circumstances
- Which filing deadlines may apply
Evidence may include attendance records, leave notices, medical restrictions, performance evaluations, disciplinary history, schedules, witness accounts, emails, text messages, and termination documents.
Possible remedies depend on the law and the facts. Depending on the claim, legally available relief may include lost pay, reinstatement, compensation for certain losses, correction of employment records, attorney’s fees, or other remedies allowed by law. No result can be promised.
Talk With an El Paso Employment Lawyer About Medical Leave After an Injury
If you were fired, demoted, disciplined, written up, or pressured to return to work after an injury, Chavez Law Firm can review the facts and explain which employment protections may apply.
The firm handles both employment law and personal injury matters in El Paso, Texas. That experience can be useful when a medical injury, workplace restrictions, leave rights, and an employment dispute overlap.
Learn more about Attorney Enrique Chavez, Jr.:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/attorney-enrique-chavez-jr/
Call 915-995-5777 or request a consultation:
https://chavezlawfirm.law/contact-us/
This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Consult an attorney about your specific situation.
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