Family And Medical Leave Act Is Expanded By New Law

In the spring of 1993 then-President Bill Clinton signed
into law the Family and Medical Leave Act (FLMA). As
most people know, the FMLA provides eligible employees
up to twelve weeks of paid or unpaid leave under certain
circumstances.
Early this year, President Bush signed into law the
National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 (NDAA).
Contained within Section 585 of the NDAA, that law
amends the FMLA in two significant ways. First, the law
creates a new qualifying reason for eligible employees to
access leave. Under the new law, eligible employees are
now entitled to up to twelve weeks of leave because of “any
qualifying exigency” which arises out of the fact that his or
her “spouse, son, daughter, or parent is on active duty, or
has been notified of an impending call to active duty status
in support of a contingency operation.”
The second change to the FMLA which occurred as a
result of the NDAA was its creation of a new category of
leave entitlement. Specifically, it provides that an eligible
employee who is the spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next
of kin of a covered service member who is recovering from
a serious illness or injury sustained in the line of duty shall
be entitled to take up to twenty-six workweeks of leave in a
single twelve month period to care for a service member. It
is referred to in the NDAA as “military caregiver leave.”
Since its inception the FMLA has been frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted by employers and employees
alike and questions abound. Among the most common
questions are whether the employee can be required to
exhaust his or her accrued, paid leave before taking FMLA
leave, whether FMLA leave can run concurrent with paid
leave or if it is addition to paid leave, and what medical
documentation an employer can seek regarding the existence of a “serious medical condition” in light of the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to
name just a few.
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