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Since its passage, the Family and Medical Leave Act has provided numerous opportunities for courts to interpret the meaning of its language, as well as the meaning of Department of Labor regulations implementing the statute. A great deal of ambiguity pervades the act, and courts throughout the country have been divided on the meaning of some of its provisions. Among the protections afforded by the FMLA is the availability of leave time for an employee with a serious health condition. That is also one of the ambiguous provisions in the act. What is a serious health condition? A recent case from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Schaar v. Lehigh Valley Health Services, 15 WH Cases 2d 1677 (3d Cir. 2010), illustrates the problem and the ways in which this circuit, and others that have dealt with the issue, have resolved it.
The FMLA was intended to provide employees who were dealing with family and health situations the time to manage them while still retaining their jobs and their benefits. To accomplish this, the statute allows certain employees to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave a year to attend to situations such as the serious health condition of a spouse, parent, or child, among other circumstances. In the case in question, the employee was dealing with her own medical condition. An employer is not allowed to discriminate or retaliate against an employee for taking FMLA leave or to interfere with taking of the leave. To be eligible for the leave, the employee must not be a key, or crucial, employee, and must have worked for the company at least a year and at least 1,250 hours during the preceding twelve months. Companies covered by the act are those that employ at least 50 employees for each working day for each of at least 20 calendar workweeks in the current or previous calendar year.
Companies were very concerned that the FMLA would be burdensome and disruptive to company operations. Congress took into consideration these concerns by placing some restrictions on an employee taking FMLA leave. For example, an employee must notify the company that he or she is taking FMLA leave and must provide medical documentation for the leave. Additionally, as applied to the...