They Fired Him for Being Depressed

Roller Bearing Company of America Used a Pandemic as Cover to Eliminate a Sick Employee

The Setup: A Man, a Medical Leave, and a Pink Slip

Richard Mooney worked for Roller Bearing Company of America (RBC), a Delaware-incorporated manufacturer. He took medical leave, as is his federally-guaranteed right under the Family and Medical Leave Act. When he came back, his job was gone.

RBC told anyone who would listen that Mooney’s termination was part of a standard “reduction in force” triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. That is a clean, corporate-sounding explanation. The jury did not buy it.

Mooney’s lawsuit alleged three things drove the firing: his age, his depression, and his decision to exercise his legal right to medical leave. He filed suit in King County Superior Court on June 3, 2020. RBC moved the case to federal court on July 1, 2022, and the case proceeded to a full jury trial.

The Verdict They Could Not Escape

The jury returned a verdict finding RBC liable under both the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Washington state Family and Medical Leave Act. The verdict form combined both claims without distinguishing between them, meaning the jury found against RBC on the whole picture.

Mooney walked away with $160,000 in compensatory damages (roughly three years of rent for a working-class family, or the equivalent of more than 3,000 hours of minimum-wage labor). On top of that, the court awarded prejudgment interest: the money RBC effectively “borrowed” by holding onto wages that legally should have been Mooney’s from the moment his first paycheck was withheld.

RBC appealed. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision filed June 5, 2025, affirmed the lower court’s judgment. RBC lost. Again.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What a Jury Can’t Price: The Human Cost of Being Punished for Getting Sick

Depression is not a choice, a character flaw, or a performance issue. It is a medical condition recognized by every major health authority on earth. Richard Mooney experienced it, sought help, and used the legal protections Congress created specifically to stop employers from punishing workers for doing exactly that.

The Family and Medical Leave Act exists because, before it was passed, workers faced a brutal choice: hide their illness, or lose their job. The law was designed to remove that impossible choice from the equation. RBC, the court record shows, put it right back. According to the jury’s finding, Mooney’s decision to extend his medical leave became a “negative factor” in RBC’s calculations — meaning the company weighed his need for recovery against his value as an asset and found him expendable.

That is the dignity violation at the core of this case. It is the message that being mentally ill, and needing time to treat it, makes you a liability to your employer. Every worker at RBC who watched Mooney get fired while out on medical leave received that message loud and clear. You are only safe here if you stay healthy.

The $160,000 ($160,000 — roughly three years of Pacific Northwest rent, or 3,200 hours of minimum-wage work) covers lost wages. It covers the financial gap. It does not cover the experience of returning from medical leave to find your position eliminated. It does not reimburse the hours spent wondering whether you caused your own firing by getting sick. It does not address the chilling effect on every other employee who watched this happen and quietly decided they would never take leave, no matter how badly they needed it.

RBC compounded the harm by invoking COVID-19 as cover. The pandemic devastated working people. It took lives, wiped out savings, and disrupted millions of careers through no fault of their own. RBC used the language of shared hardship — “reduction in force,” pandemic pressures — to disguise what a jury ultimately determined was targeted retaliation against a specific worker for a protected reason. Using a public health catastrophe as camouflage for discriminatory termination is its own category of betrayal.

The years this case consumed matter too. Mooney filed suit in June 2020. The Ninth Circuit affirmed his win in June 2025. Five years. Five years of litigation, depositions, motions, appeals, and the grinding psychological weight of fighting a corporation with a full legal team just to prove you had the right to get better. RBC’s decision to keep fighting all the way to the Ninth Circuit is itself a statement about how the company valued this worker’s time and dignity.

Legal Receipts

The Court’s Own Words. Read Them Slowly.

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality: The Two-Tier System of Getting Sick at Work

The Family and Medical Leave Act was passed in 1993 as a floor, a minimum guarantee that workers could not be punished for taking necessary medical time off. What the Mooney case reveals is that the floor itself is a battleground. RBC did not violate some obscure technicality; the company violated the central promise of the law: that you can get sick without losing your livelihood.

Workers with resources, savings, and the knowledge to hire an attorney can fight back. Richard Mooney fought for five years and won. Most people cannot afford five years of litigation. The legal protection exists on paper for everyone; in practice, it belongs to those who can outlast a corporation’s legal defense budget.

The damage award of $160,000 (roughly three years of rent, or more than ten years of federal minimum-wage work banked after expenses) represents Mooney’s personal financial loss. It does not represent what RBC spent defending this case across two levels of federal court. That asymmetry — a corporation spending potentially far more to fight than the worker ever lost — is the economic logic that discourages people from filing claims in the first place.

Public Health: Punishing Workers for Using Mental Health Leave Poisons the Workplace

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide according to the World Health Organization. The FMLA’s leave protections exist in part because untreated mental illness costs the economy, and more importantly, costs human beings enormously in terms of wellbeing and function. When a company fires someone for using depression-related leave, it does not just harm that individual. It sends a signal to every employee in earshot.

That signal is: mental illness is not a legitimate medical reason to take time off. It is a liability. It will be remembered when budget decisions get made. Workers internalize these signals and make health decisions accordingly. They delay treatment. They come to work when they cannot function. They hide symptoms. The long-term public health cost of normalized stigma in the workplace is incalculable, and cases like this one are precisely how that stigma gets institutionalized.

The Mooney case is one data point in a much larger pattern. RBC’s behavior, as found by a jury, was not rogue or accidental. It was a business decision. The company calculated that extending Mooney’s leave was a “negative factor.” That calculation did not happen in a vacuum. It reflects a workplace culture that treated recovery from mental illness as a productivity problem rather than a human need.

What Now?

Who to Watch. What to Demand. Where to Push.

RBC’s liability is established. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling stands. But a jury verdict does not fix a broken culture, and a settlement does not stop a company from doing the same thing to the next employee who gets sick.

• U.S. Department of Labor — Wage and Hour Division: Enforces the federal FMLA. File a complaint if your employer retaliates for taking leave: dol.gov/agencies/whd
• Washington State Department of Labor and Industries: Enforces the Washington FMLA equivalent. Workers in WA have additional state-level protections.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): Age discrimination was also alleged in Mooney’s case. File disability and age discrimination complaints here.
• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): Workplace rights resources for workers with mental health conditions. nami.org
• Workers’ rights organizations in your area: Look up your local labor council, worker center, or employment rights clinic — many offer free consultations.
• Roller Bearing Company of America: A publicly-traded entity. Shareholders and institutional investors can and should ask questions about corporate culture, labor practices, and legal exposure.

The most powerful thing you can do right now is know your rights before you need them. Download a copy of the FMLA fact sheet from the Department of Labor, save it somewhere accessible, and share it with every coworker you trust. Mutual aid starts with shared knowledge. Talk to your coworkers. Compare notes on how leave requests are handled at your company. Isolation is how retaliation stays invisible; collective awareness is how it gets exposed.