One employee tried exactly that. The Seventh Circuit explained why it didn’t work. TL;DR: An employee failed to return to work after her approved leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) expired. After the employer terminated her for failing to return, she attempted to retroactively report several…
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: it’s the Monday after the Super Bowl, an employee with approved intermittent FMLA leave asks for a personal day, gets denied, switches to FMLA, and later finds himself terminated for “abuse.” That is not a hypothetical. It is essentially what happened in a…
Governor Murphy just expanded the New Jersey Family Leave Act. It reads cleanly in the statute. It reads a little differently once you try to apply it to real people and real leave requests. These amendments are not cosmetic. They expand coverage, accelerate employee eligibility, and formally connect NJFLA to…
Two different HR questions triggered two formal FMLA opinion letters this week – and both answers will feel uncomfortably familiar to the employers they affect. On January 5, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued six new opinion letters in total, addressing a mix of FMLA…
When criticism stays focused on performance, and not on leave, employers are on stronger footing. This decision shows how that plays out. TL;DR: A senior account manager took eight and a half days of paid time off to care for a seriously ill daughter and then her mother. She…
Sometimes a routine overtime dispute turns into an FMLA problem because no one stops to ask the right questions. A new Eleventh Circuit decision shows how easily that can happen. TL;DR: An employee told supervisors that his pregnant spouse’s condition was high risk, that she could not drive, and that…
When an employee on FMLA leave also happens to be a problem employee, HR can feel trapped. A recent federal appellate decision is a reminder that the FMLA is not a shield against legitimate discipline. If the company can show it would have taken the same action regardless of…
When your employees do not work a standard 9-to-5 schedule, calculating their Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) entitlement can get tricky. A new opinion letter from the U.S. Department of Labor clarifies how to handle it, especially when mandatory overtime and optional extra shifts are part of the mix.…
Sometimes, what an employee says about their own abilities can be the employer’s best defense. TL;DR: The Fifth Circuit recently affirmed summary judgment for an employer in a case where a longtime employee claimed, through one count labeled as FMLA discrimination, interference, and retaliation, that she was fired after taking…
Sometimes it is not the reduction in force itself that creates risk, but the combination of what is said and how the data is applied. In this case, six words from a supervisor, “a potential strain on the department,” together with disputed productivity metrics and the treatment of a pregnant…