Dismissal Despite Severe Disability: Your Rights

Who receives special protection from dismissal?

A dismissal despite severe disability is one of the most difficult dismissals for an employer to carry out. The legislator has equipped severely disabled people with special dismissal protection that comes on top of general dismissal protection. Before we get into the details, the most important question: do you belong to the protected group of people?

• You are severely disabled if you have been assessed with a degree of disability (GdB) of at least 50 (§ 2 para. 2 SGB IX). This assessment is made by the pensions office (Versorgungsamt) upon your application, and is usually proven by the severely disabled person's ID card or the assessment notice.
• You can be treated as equivalent if your GdB is at least 30 but less than 50 and you would not be able to obtain or keep a suitable job without this equal status (§ 2 para. 3 SGB IX). You do not grant yourself this equal status: the Employment Agency does so upon your application. People with equal status enjoy the same special dismissal protection as severely disabled people.

Special dismissal protection for severe disability is therefore one of several statutory protective shields, similar to the protection during a dismissal during pregnancy or a dismissal during parental leave. You can find an overview of all protected groups under Special Dismissal Protection.

Important to understand: this protection does not make you undismissable. It does, however, force your employer into an official procedure with additional participation duties, on which many dismissals fail in practice. This is exactly what creates your strong negotiating position, more on that below.

The core protection: approval by the integration office (§ 168 SGB IX)

The heart of this protection is set out in § 168 SGB IX: dismissal of a severely disabled person's employment relationship by the employer requires the prior approval of the integration office (Integrationsamt, called the Inklusionsamt in some federal states). This applies to every dismissal by the employer:

• for the ordinary dismissal with notice period,
• for the extraordinary dismissal for important cause, including summary dismissal,
• and also for a dismissal with the offer of new terms (Änderungskündigung), meant to force changed working conditions on you.

The consequence is severe: if the employer dismisses you without the integration office's approval in place, the dismissal is invalid. It then no longer matters whether the grounds for dismissal would in themselves have held up. The approval must also be obtained before the dismissal is issued; a subsequent approval does not cure the flaw.

There's another point many employers overlook: once the integration office has approved an ordinary dismissal, the employer can only declare the dismissal within one month of the approval being served (§ 171 para. 3 SGB IX). If they let this deadline pass, they need a new approval. Such procedural errors can make dismissals open to challenge too.

But watch out, and this is the most important sentence on this page: an invalid dismissal only stays without consequence if you defend yourself in time. Even where the integration office's approval is missing, you generally have to file an unfair dismissal claim within 3 weeks. More details on the deadline below.

First orientation on what's possible in your case: Calculate your possible severance pay in 2 minutes with our severance pay calculator.

How the approval procedure at the integration office works

If your employer wants to dismiss you, they first have to submit an application for approval to the integration office and give reasons for it. The office does not simply decide based on employment law paperwork: it primarily examines whether the dismissal is compatible with the special interests of severely disabled people, for example whether the dismissal is actually connected to the disability and whether reasonable alternatives exist.

Hearing: you get involved

Before the integration office decides, it collects statements: from you, usually also from the works council and from the severely disabled persons' representative body, and it works towards an amicable agreement. Take this hearing seriously: this is where you can raise arguments early, for example that a job suited to your condition would be available, or that the real reason for dismissal is a pretext. What you present here shapes the whole procedure.

Deadlines for ordinary dismissal (§ 171 SGB IX)

For ordinary dismissal: the integration office should reach its decision within one month of receiving the application (§ 171 para. 1 SGB IX). The decision is served on both employer and employee. If the office grants approval, the employer can only declare the dismissal within one month of the approval being served (§ 171 para. 3 SGB IX).

Deadlines for extraordinary dismissal (§ 174 SGB IX)

For extraordinary dismissal, the procedure is significantly accelerated (§ 174 SGB IX):

• The employer can only apply for approval within 2 weeks, counted from the point at which they became aware of the facts relevant to the dismissal.
• The integration office reaches its decision within 2 weeks of receiving the application. If it fails to decide within this period, approval is deemed to have been granted.
• Once approval has been granted (or is deemed granted), the employer must declare the dismissal without delay.

This chain of deadlines is prone to error: a late application, an incorrectly calculated start date, a late dismissal declaration. Any of these mistakes can bring the dismissal down. The exact process in your individual case (how documents are served, deadline calculation, options for objecting to the office's decision) depends on the specific procedure and belongs in the hands of specialists. Background information on the procedure is also available from the integration offices themselves.

By the way: the integration office's approval only says that dismissal may take place, not that the dismissal is valid under employment law. Whether it is socially justified is then examined solely by the labour court. So the employer has to clear both hurdles, one after the other.

When special dismissal protection does not apply (§ 173 SGB IX)

Strong as this protection is, it doesn't apply in every situation. § 173 SGB IX excludes certain cases. The practically most important ones:

• 6-month waiting period: special dismissal protection does not apply if your employment relationship has lasted less than 6 months at the point the dismissal is received (§ 173 para. 1 no. 1 SGB IX). During this early period, which usually coincides with the probationary period, the employer doesn't need the integration office's approval. They must, however, still notify the office of the dismissal (§ 173 para. 4 SGB IX).
• Severe disability not established or not proven: the protection requires that your status as a severely disabled or equivalent person is proven, obvious, or at least applied for in time at the point of dismissal. If this status is neither established nor an application filed early enough for the authority to have decided without any fault on your part, special dismissal protection does not apply (§ 173 para. 3 SGB IX).
• Employer unaware of the disability: if the employer does not know of your severe disability or equal status and it isn't obvious either, case law says you need to inform them promptly after receiving the dismissal to be able to rely on the protection. Waiting too long risks losing your special dismissal protection. The safe rule of thumb is therefore: inform them immediately and verifiably, ideally within a few days.
• Further special cases: § 173 SGB IX also contains narrowly defined exceptions, for example for certain older employees with a severance or pension entitlement, and for weather-related dismissals with a guaranteed right of re-employment. Whether any of these applies is a question for the individual case.

Bear in mind: even if special dismissal protection exceptionally doesn't apply, you're not without protection. General dismissal protection under the Dismissal Protection Act, the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of disability, and the formal requirements for every dismissal all apply regardless.

Not sure whether your dismissal can be challenged? Start with the severance pay calculator and get a first assessment of your negotiating position in 2 minutes.

Severely disabled persons' representative body and works council: two more hurdles

Alongside the integration office, the employer has to involve two workplace bodies before a dismissal, provided they exist:

• Severely disabled persons' representative body (SBV): the employer must inform the SBV promptly and comprehensively about all matters affecting severely disabled people, and hear it before any decision. For dismissals, this applies explicitly: a dismissal issued without the SBV's involvement is invalid (§ 178 para. 2 SGB IX). If your workplace has an SBV and it was bypassed, you have an independent, very solid ground for invalidity.
• Works council: separately, the general rule applies: if a works council exists, it must be heard before any dismissal (§ 102 BetrVG). A dismissal without this hearing is invalid, and even a hearing with substantive errors (for example incomplete or incorrect information) can bring the dismissal down.

Count up everything an employer has to get right when dismissing a severely disabled person: obtain the integration office's approval and observe its deadlines, involve the SBV, hear the works council, comply with the written form requirement, correctly calculate the notice period, and finally have a reason for dismissal that holds up before the labour court. Every single step is a potential source of error, and in practice these mistakes happen constantly. For you, each one is a lever.

The Dismissal Protection Act and the 3-week claim deadline

Special dismissal protection doesn't replace general dismissal protection, it comes in addition to it. If you've worked for more than 6 months at a company with typically more than 10 employees, the dismissal also needs a reason that socially justifies it: for operational, conduct-related, or personal reasons. You can read up on whether the Dismissal Protection Act applies to you under Dismissal Protection in Small Businesses. With an operational dismissal, one further point applies to you as a severely disabled person: severe disability is one of the statutory criteria factored into social selection (Sozialauswahl), which further strengthens your position.

And now the point that decides everything: the deadline. You generally have to file an unfair dismissal claim with the labour court within 3 weeks of receiving the written dismissal (§ 4 KSchG). If you miss this deadline, the dismissal is generally deemed valid from the start, even if it's actually full of errors.

There is one special feature where a dismissal requires official approval: in that case, the deadline for filing a claim only starts running from the point at which the authority's decision is communicated to you (§ 4 sentence 4 KSchG). Never rely on this exception without specialist review, though. Whether it applies depends on the individual case, and the safe strategy is always the same: file a claim within 3 weeks of receiving the dismissal. To find out exactly how many days you have left, check our deadline calculator for unfair dismissal claims.

The claim itself isn't an act of war, it's the normal way to secure your rights and build a negotiating position. Most proceedings don't end with a judgment but with a settlement, often already at the conciliation hearing a few weeks after the claim is filed. You can read about how the process works under Unfair Dismissal Claim.

Severance pay with a severe disability: your double leverage

There's generally no automatic statutory entitlement to severance pay upon dismissal, even with a severe disability. Still, your negotiating position is above average strong, for a simple reason: litigation risk.

To dismiss you, your employer has to correctly handle two protection systems at once, SGB IX (integration office, SBV) and the Dismissal Protection Act (social justification, works council hearing). If they fail at any point, the employment relationship continues, and they have to pay you back wages for the entire duration of the proceedings. This risk is considerably higher for severely disabled employees than in a normal case, and it's exactly this risk that employers often buy off with a settlement including severance pay, whether during proceedings or beforehand through a termination agreement (Aufhebungsvertrag).

The well-known rule of thumb serves as a starting point for the amount: 0.5 gross monthly salaries per year of employment. It's not an entitlement, it's a negotiating anchor. With a strong starting position, which you often have with special dismissal protection, negotiations quite often end up above this formula. What influences the amount in detail can be read under Severance Pay: Amount, and for taxation it's worth looking at the one-fifth rule (Fünftelregelung).

Worked example: Sabine, GdB 50, 12 years with the company

Sabine has been with the company for 12 years and earns 4,000 € gross a month. She has an assessed GdB of 50. Her employer issues an ordinary dismissal but fails to involve the severely disabled persons' representative body. Sabine files an unfair dismissal claim within the deadline.

The 24,000 € is only the starting point of the negotiation, not its end. Because the dismissal is likely invalid due to the missing SBV involvement, and the employer also has the approval procedure and social justification working against them, Sabine negotiates from a position of strength. In such situations, many negotiations end up above the rule of thumb; by how much depends on the individual case and can't seriously be pinned down in general terms. On top of that, there's her long notice period of 5 months, whose time value the employer also has to buy out if the relationship ends early. More on this order of magnitude: Severance Pay After 10 Years.

With any settlement or termination agreement, also think about your unemployment benefit: carelessly ending the employment relationship can trigger a benefit suspension period (Sperrzeit) on unemployment benefit. A cleanly worded termination agreement helps prevent this.

Work through your own example: The severance pay calculator shows you your personal reference figure in 2 minutes.

Illness-related dismissal and workplace reintegration management (§ 167 para. 2 SGB IX)

In practice, severe disability and dismissal are often connected to illness: the employer wants to dismiss you because of long or frequent absences. Such an illness-related dismissal is a subtype of personal grounds dismissal and is already subject to strict requirements on its own: a negative health prognosis, a significant impact on operational interests, and a balancing of interests that also factors in your severe disability.

On top of that comes workplace reintegration management (BEM): if you've been unable to work for more than 6 weeks in a row, or repeatedly, within a year, the employer has to offer you a BEM (§ 167 para. 2 SGB IX), meaning jointly working out how your incapacity for work can be overcome and your job preserved. A missing BEM doesn't automatically make a dismissal invalid, but it significantly increases the employer's burden of explanation in proceedings: they then have to explain in detail why even a BEM wouldn't have produced a milder measure than dismissal. For severely disabled people, the integration office additionally checks closely whether the employer has fulfilled their duties towards disability-appropriate employment.

In short: an illness-related dismissal against a severely disabled person without a proper BEM and without checked alternatives suited to their condition is a very risky undertaking for the employer, and correspondingly strong leverage for you in negotiations.

Additional leave under § 208 SGB IX

A side point, but worth real money: as a severely disabled person, you're entitled to 5 additional paid working days of leave per holiday year on a 5-day working week (§ 208 SGB IX). If your working time is spread over more or fewer than 5 days, this is converted accordingly. This additional leave does not apply to people with equal status.

Why this matters for dismissal: when the employment relationship ends, unused leave, including additional leave, generally has to be paid out. This leave compensation belongs on the tally sheet of every settlement and termination agreement. So check how many days of leave (including additional leave) are still outstanding before you sign anything.

Received a dismissal, or expecting one: what you should do now

You'll find the full step-by-step guide under Received a Dismissal: What Now? Here's the short version for your situation:

1. Don't sign anything. No termination agreement, no receipt confirmation with added clauses, no "amicable solution" under time pressure. By signing, you can effectively hand over your special dismissal protection.
2. Document the day of receipt. The 3-week deadline for filing a claim runs from when you receive the written dismissal. Note the date and circumstances and keep the letter and envelope.
3. Inform them of your severe disability, if unknown. If your employer knows nothing about your severe disability or equal status, inform them without delay after receiving the dismissal, in writing and verifiably. Don't wait several weeks under any circumstances.
4. Have participation requirements checked. Is there an integration office approval in place? Was the SBV involved, was the works council heard? Any one of these questions can decide the validity of the dismissal on its own.
5. Register as a jobseeker. Register with the Employment Agency as a jobseeker in good time, even if you're challenging the dismissal. This protects your unemployment benefit.
6. File a claim within 3 weeks. Without a timely unfair dismissal claim, you lose nearly all the levers described on this page.

And if you don't have a dismissal yet but can see it coming: get your documents in order (assessment notice, equal status notice, documentation on BEM offers), react to any warning notice (Abmahnung) deliberately rather than impulsively, and get an assessment early. If you go into a conversation about a termination agreement with severance pay prepared, you negotiate measurably better.

Get clarity now: The severance pay calculator gives you an initial orientation for your conversation or proceedings in 2 minutes.

How can we help you?

Have you received a dismissal as a severely disabled or equivalent person, or are you expecting one? We review your case together with lawyers specialising in employment law: the integration office's approval, involvement of the SBV and the works council, social justification, and we negotiate the best possible outcome for you.

We carry the risk: purely success-based, no upfront cost, paid only on success. Start with an initial assessment through our severance pay calculator, it only takes 2 minutes, and keep the 3-week deadline in mind.