Employees must meet both FMLA leave eligibility requirements

Q         An employee who has requested Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave has been with us for only 11 months but has worked 1,908 hours in that time. Does he have to meet both the 12 months of employment and the 1,250 hours to be eligible for FMLA?

Yes, the employee must meet both requirements—employed for at least 12 months and worked at least 1,250 hours for the employer—to be eligible for FMLA leave. When calculating the 12 months of employment, you should be aware of the “break in service” rule, which states that an employee who previously worked for an employer less than seven years ago gets credit for their previous employment for purposes of calculating the 12 months.

Employers with 15 or more employees must also comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires you to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities so they can perform their essential job functions. Many states have parallel disability discrimination laws that might apply to smaller employers.

Although the ADA and parallel state laws aren’t technically leave laws like the FMLA, a commonly recognized accommodation you need to provide to employees is time off from work. Notably, neither the ADA nor parallel state laws have any sort of 12-month requirement. Instead, employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations, such as a leave of absence from work, on day one of employment. In addition, they may be entitled to reasonable accommodations under disability laws even after they exhaust their FMLA leave.