LOCATION: Alabama, USA
Hello! My husband (40M) was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in March of 2025 (he was 38 at the time). He had 12 rounds of chemo and 5 days of radiation. He worked through all of this even though it was incredibly difficult for him. He started short term disability in Q4 2025 as we were getting ready to schedule surgery to remove the tumors in his colon and liver. Then they confirmed that he had cancer in his lungs. Surgery was put on pause. We had a short break in treatment. He started chemo again this year and this one has had different side effects that have been... a lot. Short term disability was active through April. We knew that it would end in April and he'd been working with his provider to transition to long term disability. Everything was approved and long term was to start at the begnning of May. We thought everything was peachy. Everything had been filed and taken care of, we thought we just had to focus on treatment and getting better.
Jump to today, May 5. He gets a call from HR. It turns out, it's company policy that when someone transitions to long term disability that their employment is terminated. When the disability is up, you have the "opportunity" to apply for any open positions at that time. They'll transition him to COBRA insurance (he currently has BCBS and is $400 away from his max out of pocket). We were completely blindsided by this. With everyone we've spoken to over the last few months with regards to short/long term disability, NO ONE has mentioned this to us. He's spoken to the disability proivders, he's spoken to his HR people and NO ONE gave us that information beforehand. His direct boss had no idea this was happening.
I guess my question is, how is this legal? He works for a Fortune500 company, I can't imagine that it's illegal. Is there anything we can do? Are our hands tied? It would have been nice to know about this a month ago instead of scrambling now to try to figure out alternatives.