SACRAMENTO (LN) — A federal magistrate judge in Sacramento threw out all five of Miriam Flores's disability-discrimination claims against DaVita, Inc. but refused to dismiss her sick-leave and wrongful-termination claims, holding that a worker who texts her supervisor from an urgent-care clinic has given all the notice California Labor Code §233 requires when the need for leave is unforeseeable.
Flores, who started as a medical social worker for DaVita in May 2024, alleged she was called into a supervisor's office on March 13, 2025, and fired for failing to call off work at least two hours before her start time on March 10 — the morning she woke up with severe abdominal and lower-back pain. According to the complaint, she texted supervisor Melanie Toupi at 7:57 a.m. to say she was in pain but would still report to work at 9:00 a.m. By 9:19 a.m., however, she had decided the pain was unbearable, stopped at Kaiser Permanente's Tracy Medical Offices for emergency treatment, and informed Toupi of this via text.
The court held that sequence — unforeseeable need, notice as soon as practicable, termination three days later — fits within §233's prohibition on penalizing employees for using accrued sick leave. DaVita had argued that §246.5 of the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 supplies no private right of action, a point the court accepted, but the court held that Flores grounded her claim in §233, which does carry a civil enforcement mechanism.
"The core of the claim – that plaintiff used accrued leave, gave notice as soon as she could, and was fired in response – comes easily within the scope of section 233," the magistrate judge wrote.
The FEHA claims fared worse. The court held that the back pain Flores reported before her termination — severe enough to keep her home one day, but not the next two — did not rise to the level of a disability under California Government Code §12926(m), which requires a condition that limits a major life activity. The court distinguished cases where plaintiffs had longstanding conditions, multi-week restrictions, or repeated medical appointments, and rejected Flores's argument that the polyp later discovered on her cervix — identified as the source of her pain and bleeding, and which caused a miscarriage on March 29 — retroactively established a disability at the time of firing.
"It is perfectly clear from the FAC that defendant did not know about either the pregnancy or the polyp until after plaintiff's termination," the court wrote, citing the absence of the causal link that FEHA discrimination requires.
The retaliation claim fell on similar logic. The court held that taking a single sick day and notifying a supervisor of a medical condition does not constitute a protected request for disability accommodation under FEHA — it is simply notification of a medical condition. The failure-to-accommodate and interactive-process claims were dismissed for the same reason as the disability-discrimination claim, and the derivative failure-to-prevent claim followed.
The wrongful-termination count survives, but only on the Labor Code theory. The court was explicit that it cannot proceed on any FEHA basis, and denied leave to amend the dismissed claims as futile, holding that the problem was not missing facts but that the clearly alleged facts cannot support FEHA liability.
DaVita's advance-notice policy — which the complaint alleges requires employees to call off at least two hours before a shift — now faces a direct test under §233's rule that unforeseeable sick-leave needs require only notice as soon as practicable, a standard Flores's 7:57 a.m. text and mid-morning clinic visit will be measured against as the case proceeds.