- The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently endorsed a Labor Department regulation that requires employers to designate an employee's leave as FMLA-qualifying or run the risk of having to provide employees with more than twelve weeks of leave in a given twelve month period.
- In Plant v Morton International, Inc, (February 4, 2000), a former employee, who was terminated while out on medical leave, alleged that he had been wrongfully terminated in violation of the FMLA. The employee had injured his back in a 1995 car accident and received paid medical leave. Months after returning to work, the employee aggravated his back injury while on the job and took another paid leave of absence at his doctor's direction. Weeks later, while still out on leave, the company terminated the employee for poor performance.
- The trial court dismissed the employee's FMLA claim, ruling that because the employee could not have returned to work within the twelve weeks of leave allotted by the FMLA he could not make a successful FMLA claim. The Sixth Circuit reversed and held that the employee may have been entitled to an additional twelve weeks of leave under the FMLA because his employer failed to notify him that it was counting his absence against his FMLA leave allowance.
- The court made clear that employer-provided leave, whether paid or unpaid, may be counted toward the twelve weeks' minimum leave required by the FMLA. However, the FMLA regulations place the burden on the employer in all circumstances to designate leave, paid or unpaid, as FMLA-qualifying and to give notice of that designation to the employee. The court noted that the regulations require that employers wishing to count paid leave against the twelve-week minimum must do so within two days of learning of the employee's reason for requesting the leave. Failure to give notice within this time period prevents the employer from designating paid leave as FMLA leave retrospectively, and only that portion of the leave following notification by the employer may be designated as FMLA leave and counted against the twelve-week entitlement. As such, the regulation and the court's holding create the possibility that an employer could provide a considerable amount of paid leave time to an employee during the course of a year, and still be obligated to provide up to twelve more weeks of leave under the FMLA.
Court Upholds Regulation That Could Require More Than Twelve Weeks of FMLA Leave
This article was edited and reviewed by FindLaw Attorney Writers | Last reviewed March 26, 2008
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