What's the current situation in the USA in relation to being fired for being suicidal?

Just as stupid as locking up someone in debtor’s prison for being poor.

The company just doesn’t want to deal with it, in case you do it on their time.

We would need a lot more details to say anything useful.

You can’t fire someone for being suicidal.

As a general principle, you only fire people for poor job performance, or behavior that disrupts the operation of the business.

As long as you are doing your job, have all the suicidal ideation you want. it is against the law to fire someone because of health issues, (which being suicidal is prima facie mental health issues).

I’ve never heard of such a thing.

In many circles in the USA, whether it’s illegal or not, there’s still a common stigma against a person having any kind of mental health issue. So people, particularly in professional situations, tend not to mention it, and often to avoid getting assistance.

In CA, we are in an “at will” firing situation. The company can fire you whenever it wants to, without giving a reason. As long as they don’t say what the reason is (and that reason is an illegal reason) they can fire you, and simply not mention the real reason. It’s a wink-wink, nod-nod situation.

In my experience, I’ve known a person who made a complaint of sexual harassment, get fired for “not performing at a consistently high level” even though they had performed at a consistently high level for over 10 years, and had always received good performance evaluations. She got the boot, very shortly after reporting sexual harassment that had gone of for years by one of her supervisors. Her lawyer told her that unless she had video and audio of the perpetrator, it was unlikely that she would win her case, and if she lost, then she would have to pay the creep’s legal bills. It was easier for the company to fire her, than it would have been to go through any publicity, or having to fire a higher level employee. It was all wink wink, because it was well known to most of the females who worked there, what was going on with this creep, but everyone also knew that it would be the women who would be fired first, not the creep.

In another instance, a group of employees were fired for reporting multiple, ongoing, safety violations, but once again, it was easier to say that “the company was going in a different direction and didn’t need them anymore” than to go through a lawsuit, publicly. There was a lawsuit, that was settled out of court, but the people did not get their jobs back, nor were any changes made. According to the company, they were not fired, they were simply not asked back, because they were no longer needed, even though some of them had been there for years, and other people were hired in their place. Wink, wink.

?????
The first two responses are from Canada.

Most employers won’t fire someone for suicidal thoughts or attempts, unless it interferes with their work.
Some actually try to help.

One way or another, everybody is suicidal, or thinks about it, or has thought about it. It’s only normal.
Actually attempting it is the sign that one has gone over the edge.
A person who isn’t really serious about suicide, leaves a note or does things that give indications of what they might be planning.
A person who is really serious about doing it, does it. No need to fire them!

Each company has their own policies. The employees are given a copy of the policy and are expected to abide by the rules. As @Kardamom above says, in California, an employer doesn’t
have to have a reason because we are an “at will” state.

In my state, you can fire most people, who aren’t in a union, for any reason…

If you’ve been at the company for at least a year, through FMLA you can take up to 12 weeks off (without pay) to deal with a health issue and they can’t fire you for that. That’s pretty much the only protection people who are sick for any reason (mental illness such as suicidality as well as physical illness) have from being fired while they cope with their health issue. Pretty useless if the issue you have is chronic and not going to get resolved in 12 weeks.