An employer fires an employee after the company has approved him for intermittent leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. The employee begins taking leave in separate blocks of time for a single qualifying reason. Then, the employer fires the employee. So the employee claims FMLA interference. What exactly…
The ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization when the U.S. Department of Labor released a statement in which the agency confirmed that it would continue “empowering women using every tool” available. The DOL supports reproductive freedom. On Friday, U.S. Secretary of…
Two posts in one week about interference with Family and Medical Leave Act rights. The FMLA prohibits employers from interfering with, restraining, or denying the exercise of FMLA rights. On Wednesday, we discussed how an employer doesn’t interfere with FMLA when it does not provide FMLA leave to an employee…
“Clairvoyance,” that’s a 10th-grade word. Let me Google it just in case. Ok, we’re good. We’re taught, and by “we,” I mean our managers. And by “taught,” I mean “cross our fingers that they were paying attention during training,” that an employee does not need to say the words “Family…
May is Mental Health Month. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which enforces the Family and Medical Leave Act, just dropped some additional resources for workers on their rights to take leave for serious mental health conditions and for employers to better understand how to comply with…
Last night, I went through my Google Drive of older cases about which I had intended to blog but never gotten around to it. And I found this Fifth Circuit Family and Medical Leave Act decision involving a company that fired an employee two months into his leave. The issue…
If you operate a business in a state that has a family and medical leave law, be careful when that state law does not overlap precisely with the Family and Medical Leave Act. For example, in New Jersey, a/k/a the California of the East, an employee can get job-protected leave…
“Oh, word?” — none of you, hopefully. The Family and Medical Leave Act states that an eligible employee “shall be entitled to a total of twelve workweeks of leave during any twelve-month period” for several qualifying reasons. When I look up the word “shall” in the dictionary, it says, “used…
(Allegedly.) Three lies and no baby. According to a Georgia Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a state employee informed HR that she was pregnant in October 2020. Seven months later, in May 2021, she announced that she had given birth. The employer later received an email from an individual claiming…
I had this great post planned for today about the millions of American workers who skip work the day after the Super Bowl — and what employers can do (legally) to address it. Then, I remembered that I wrote about it back in 2020. So, since I’m feeling lazy pragmatic,…