Breast cancer treatments go on for years. My case will be 7-10yrs. Exams, oncologist, scans and hopefully no reoccurance.
When an employer fires an employee "who merely has a relationship or association with an individual with a disability," it may trigger legal action under the ADA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and/or the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), says Michael Grubbs, a labor and employment lawyer at Sherman & Howard in Phoenix, Arizona.
McPhail claimed discrimination under all 3 acts and wrongful termination under Arizona law, saying that he'd been fired because of his wife's disability and Cox's speculation about further time off–plus the insurance costs to the company of his wife's cancer (some $5,000 per month; his health care plan was company-funded). An Arizona court has ruled in favor of McPhail, refusing Cox's attempt to have the case dismissed.
How could McPhail invoke the ADA? In what Grubbs describes as a "somewhat overlooked provision of the ADA," there's a prohibition "excluding or otherwise denying equal jobs or benefits to a qualified individual because of the known disability of an individual with whom the qualified individual is known to have a relationship or association."
An example of associational discrimination? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers this one: "An employer may not treat a worker less favorably based on stereotypical assumptions about the worker's ability to perform job duties satisfactorily while also providing care to a relative or other individual with a disability."
The 2nd time they had him off his last day he worked was oct 19th and they fired him dec 19th. They called him off everyday during that time. They would let him collect unemployment because they said they had him under fmla which my husband told them he didn't want to take fmla days.

