Sergio Romero worked as an Account Executive at KTXL FOX40, Tribune's Sacramento Fox affiliate, from October 2018 until Tribune terminated his employment effective July 1, 2024. Romero had been diagnosed with gastric adenocarcinoma — stomach cancer — in June 2023 and spent much of the following year on medical leave while undergoing chemotherapy and surgery. Tribune argued it let him go because the station was losing revenue share, facing personnel shortages, and needed to build a sales team for the NFL season and the 2025 Super Bowl broadcast. Romero countered that he was fired because of his disability and that Tribune failed to accommodate a finite, foreseeable leave.
Magistrate Judge Allison Claire, sitting in the Eastern District of California, held that genuine disputes of material fact on the discrimination, failure-to-accommodate, and failure-to-engage-in-the-interactive-process claims preclude summary judgment under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), the state statute barring employers from discharging workers on account of a medical condition or physical disability.
The decision turned on two overlapping factual fights. First, whether Romero's continued leave constituted a reasonable accommodation: Romero testified he was cleared to return to work by mid-August 2024, his direct supervisor Dan Haass testified the department could have continued covering Romero's accounts even past June 12, 2024, and Gunther's own email showed she understood Romero would return to work in September — a belief she explained in her deposition by stating she understood his treatment would not be finished until August or September. Second, whether Tribune's stated business rationale held up: Haass — who would have had direct knowledge of the department's needs — was never consulted about whether there was an immediate business need to fill Romero's position, and the sales-team-of-15 benchmark Gunther cited was described by the Station's Director of Sales as something that had been stated as a nationwide standard at some point, but was never a local goal, and the local unit had never reached that number. On June 12, 2024, when Human Resources representative Margarita Red-Horse asked Gunther whether there was any way to continue accommodating Romero, Gunther responded it was "just too hard" and that Gunther "needed to continue to try to get her departments in order."
On the failure-to-engage-in-the-interactive-process claim — FEHA's requirement that employers conduct a good-faith, back-and-forth dialogue with a disabled employee to identify workable accommodations — the court held the adequacy of Tribune's efforts was likewise a jury question. On March 4, 2024, Romero texted Haass that surgery was scheduled for March 28, followed by six to eight weeks of recovery and two months of radiation. There is no evidence Tribune sought a firm return date or followed up before terminating his employment.
The wrongful-termination-in-violation-of-public-policy claim survived as a derivative of the FEHA claims. Because those claims proceed, so does the wrongful-termination count.
On the dueling expert motions, the court denied both without prejudice, reserving Daubert challenges — the standard for gatekeeping expert testimony — for motions in limine at the Final Pretrial Conference. Plaintiff's damages economist, George Jouganatos, Ph.D., calculated Romero's total economic loss at $975,234, comprising $341,021 in back pay and $634,213 in front pay. Defendant's vocational expert, June Hagen, Ph.D., opined that Romero could have secured comparable employment within 23 weeks of his termination. The court found both reports adequate under the disclosure rules of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, leaving the substantive reliability fights for later. A jury trial is set for October 19, 2026.