Tesla allegedly fired a disabled employee after she collapsed with seizures at work and asked for shorter shifts, a new federal lawsuit claims.
Lakeisha Ward, a former Post Order Support representative at Tesla’s Nevada operations, filed suit on March 18 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada (Ward v. Tesla, Inc., Case No. 2:26-cv-00800), bringing ten claims including disability discrimination, harassment, retaliation, failure to accommodate, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Ward disclosed her sickle cell disease when she was hired in October 2024, according to the filing. The trouble started in April 2025, when she told her supervisor she was feeling unwell. Despite her report, Tesla directed her back to work. She then suffered two back-to-back seizures in a hallway, collapsed twice, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. The company did not file an incident report, the suit says.
Her supervisor allegedly told her she was not sick and suggested she “go outside and get some fresh air.” The same supervisor also told coworkers that Ward was “faking” her condition, according to the lawsuit. When Ward asked about workers’ compensation and medical leave, both requests were denied.
Three days after returning to work, Ward had another seizure on site and was again rushed to the hospital, hitting her head and breaking a tooth.
She went on short-term disability leave from roughly May through September 2025. When she was medically cleared to return, her treating physician sent Tesla a written request that Ward work eight-hour shifts instead of twelve. A different supervisor denied the accommodation upon her return, the filing states.
Ward raised her concerns with management about the earlier remarks dismissing her condition. Within weeks — on or about October 27, 2025 — Tesla ended her employment on what the suit calls false and pretextual grounds.
The lawsuit contends the real reasons were her disability, her time on leave, her accommodation request, her workers’ compensation inquiry, and her harassment complaint.
The case is in its earliest stages, and no court has made any determination on the merits. Ward filed a charge with the EEOC and the Nevada Equal Rights Commission in January 2026. The agency closed the matter without findings and issued her an immediate right to sue.
For HR professionals, the case reads as a cautionary sequence — a supervisor openly questioning an employee’s medical condition, a physician-backed accommodation request denied without apparent engagement, and a termination that followed closely on the heels of a harassment complaint. Proven or not, these are the kinds of allegations that end up in court when basic protocols around disability, leave, and accommodation fall short.