Target Corporation hired Daniel Husband in October 2020 as a fulfillment expert at its Burbank store. Although Target’s new-hire materials explained that the company would attempt to accommodate known physical or mental limitations, Husband did not disclose to any Target official that he had been diagnosed with bipolar I disorder. He worked without incident for approximately 20 months.
Things changed in the summer of 2022. On June 9, 2022, Husband entered the store while off duty and became visibly upset with an employee; the employee reported that Husband used profanity, though Husband denied it. He was verbally counseled and later received a written memo.
On July 7, 2022, Husband arrived for his night shift looking deflated, then suddenly became angry. He recounted hitting himself in the temple and said that his fulfillment workload was “laughing at him.” He became highly emotional, pointed fingers, and yelled at a coworker. His supervisor, Daniel Abts, sent him home. Abts found the behavior “somewhat disturbing” and emailed store leadership expressing concern for Husband’s “mental state.”
The next evening, July 8, Husband arrived shaking, distraught, and breathing heavily. He told Abts he thought he had “killed” his stepmother by speaking a word and asked whether he had killed anyone at the store. Abts found the statements “very irrational” and “very disturbing,” believed Husband “needed help,” and sent him home with a recommendation that he see a doctor or psychiatric professional. Husband and his father returned to the store that night and again the next morning, July 9, insisting Husband was “fine.” During the July 9 meeting with store leadership, managers reported that Husband erupted with profanity directed at Target, though Husband’s father denied the outburst occurred.
Later on July 9, Target’s store director, human resources lead, and district HR business partner decided to terminate Husband for violating the company’s workplace violence policy. At that time, Husband had never informed Target of his bipolar disorder or requested any accommodations. On July 10 — after the termination decision had been made but before Husband was informed — he arrived barefoot at the store, entered the employee-only area, grabbed security keys, ran out, claimed to be someone else, threw the keys at an employee, and began to disrobe. On July 18, Husband submitted a medical note clearing him to return to work but disclosing no diagnosis; he was informed that day of his termination. Subsequent requests for reinstatement, including a September 2022 letter from counsel asserting disability discrimination, went unanswered.
Husband sued Target under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) for disability discrimination, failure to provide reasonable accommodation, and failure to engage in the interactive process. Target moved for summary judgment. The trial court granted the motion, ruling that Target had no knowledge of Husband’s mental disability when it decided to terminate him because there was more than one reasonable interpretation of his workplace conduct, and that Husband had never disclosed his disability or requested accommodation. The court also found that Target had a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the termination — a genuine belief that Husband had made threats or engaged in violence against coworkers in violation of company policy.
The Second District Court of Appeal affirmed in the published case of Husband v. Target Corporation, -No. B342334 (May 2026).
The opinion addresses a question at the intersection of all three FEHA theories: under what circumstances will an employer be charged with knowledge of an undisclosed mental disability based solely on its own observations? The court held that, as a matter of law, two incidents of aggressive, emotional, and irrational behavior were insufficient to impute such knowledge.
For a FEHA discrimination claim, the court applied the standard from Brundage v. Hahn (1997) 57 Cal.App.4th 228, 237: when an employee has not disclosed a disability, the employer is charged with knowledge only when “the fact of disability is the only reasonable interpretation of the known facts.” For failure-to-accommodate and interactive-process claims, the court applied the related standard from Pensinger v. Bowsmith, Inc. (1998) 60 Cal.App.4th 709, 724–725, and Soria v. Univision Radio Los Angeles, Inc. (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 570, 601: an employer’s duty is triggered only when observed symptoms “are so obviously manifestations of an underlying disability” that the existence of a disability “always follows” from them.
The court acknowledged that Husband’s conduct was consistent with a mental disability but concluded it was not uniquely indicative of one. His behavior could also reasonably be attributed to the effects of illegal substances, a combination of medications, or sleep deprivation — a point Husband himself conceded during his deposition. Abts’s subjective impression that Husband “needed help” and might benefit from seeing a psychiatric professional did not change the analysis. The standard is objective, the court emphasized, and one untrained supervisor’s speculation does not establish that a mental disability was the only reasonable interpretation of the facts. Allowing a co-worker’s subjective opinion to control would make employer liability turn on the vagaries of individual workplace knowledge and willingness to speculate.
The court rejected Husband’s reliance on Ninth Circuit decisions equating conduct caused by a disability with the disability itself, including Gambini v. Total Renal Care, Inc. (9th Cir. 2007) 486 F.3d 1087, 1093. Adopting that framework, the court reasoned, would effectively require every front-line supervisor to have mastered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — an unwarranted assumption that would vastly expand FEHA liability beyond its purpose.