Cindy Hawthorne spent her short stint at Georgia State University trying to enforce civil-rights rules. Now she says the university violated hers, pushing her out after chemotherapy slowed her down on the job. Hawthorne has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Georgia State and its governing board of unlawfully sidelining her while she was in treatment, a case that is already raising uncomfortable questions in Atlanta about how public employers handle serious illness.
Hawthorne says her cancer diagnosis landed just three weeks after she started at GSU and that her supervisors initially let her work remotely and take extra time on assignments, according to WSB-TV. She says she even delayed surgery to show she was committed to the job, but once chemotherapy and radiation slowed her work, she was placed on a 90-day performance-improvement plan and ultimately fired in October 2024. “I was just thrown away and lied to, to make it feel like it was my fault,” she said.
What the lawsuit says
Court records show Hawthorne filed her suit on March 10, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, naming the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia as the defendant, according to PACERMonitor. The complaint alleges that Georgia State put Hawthorne on a 90-day performance improvement plan and then fired her while she was undergoing cancer treatment, as reported by Law360. Framing her claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act, she is asking for unspecified damages and equitable relief in federal court.
Her attorney, Artur Davis, says Hawthorne postponed surgery so her team would not fall behind and argues that level of sacrifice hardly fits the profile of an employee ducking responsibility. “This is a woman who delayed having surgery because she wanted to make sure the work got done,” Davis told WSB-TV.
What the law says
Federal civil-rights guidance says employers must consider reasonable accommodations for qualified workers with disabilities and warns against using neutral performance policies in ways that effectively penalize employees with medical needs, according to the EEOC. The agency urges employers to engage in an interactive process with workers and adjust expectations where possible unless doing so would pose an undue hardship. Hawthorne’s lawsuit leans heavily on those principles in laying out her legal theory.
What happens next
For now, the case is stuck in the early pleadings stage. Docket entries reflect the March filing and list the parties but show no substantive rulings yet, according to PACERMonitor. Coverage from legal outlets indicates the two sides have not yet squared off over the merits in court. Hawthorne says she hopes the lawsuit will nudge public employers toward stronger protections for workers trying to keep their jobs while they battle cancer.
