Third-party leave administrator allegedly closed accommodation claim without supervisor's knowledge
JC Penney faces federal allegations that it fired a cancer patient after a third-party vendor inexplicably shut down her request for medical leave.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit November 17 against Penney OpCo LLC, claiming the retailer's leave administration process broke down so badly that a warehouse worker undergoing chemotherapy never got the accommodation she requested and was terminated for missing work during treatment.
Angela Grier started at a JC Penney logistics center in Georgia on or about September 29, 2022, pulling products from shelves for packing and shipping. In or about April 2023, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
When Grier began chemotherapy the following month, she did what her employer's policy told her to do: contacted the company's third-party leave administrator and requested intermittent time off for treatment and recovery. The administrator sent her the proper forms. Her doctor filled them out, documenting her breast cancer diagnosis and noting she would need two days for three chemotherapy appointments each month, plus three episodes related to her condition per month lasting up to two days per episode. The doctor indicated the duration would run from May 1, 2023, through November 30, 2023.
Then, according to the EEOC, something went wrong. The third-party administrator closed Grier's accommodation request without...
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