Today my colleague Chris Engler returns with a post that tackles a recent case that explores what should happen when an employee has exhausted her FMLA leave.  Case closed? Well, not exactly, as Chris explains.  

Most readers have heard the admonition that “No good deed goes unpunished.”  (Readers might be less aware that the phrase was coined by Connecticut’s own former U.S. Representative, Clare Boothe Luce.)

A recent federal decision in Wanamaker v. Town of Westport Board of Education reminds us that this warning is more than just a clever saying.

The plaintiff, an elementary school computer teacher, became pregnant with an expected due date in late April 2009.  Many months into the pregnancy, her  doctor ordered her to bed rest due to complications with her pregnancy.  The school district granted her FMLA leave.

So far, so good.

However, this story took an unfortunate turn after the teacher gave birth in April 2009. Suffice it to say that both the employee and her newborn daughter began to suffer from a number of severe complications and ailments.

As a result of these medical issues, the teacher couldn’t immediately return to work.  In fact, she wasn’t cleared to return to work at all until the following spring, and she ended up missing the rest of that school year.

Here’s where it gets contentious.  

It’s now the summer of 2010.  Ms. Wanamaker has not worked in roughly 16 months.  The school district offered her a job as a regular classroom teacher at her current salary for the 2010-11 school year.  She wanted to be a computer teacher again instead.  Ms. Wanamaker argued that she wasn’t medically able to work as a classroom teacher because it was more physically demanding.

After the school district eventually terminated her for, among other things, job abandonment, Ms. Wanamaker filed suit under the FMLA, the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), and state anti-discrimination laws.

(If the case sounds familiar so far, you’re not having déjà vu.  A number of bloggers (for example, here, here, and here) covered an earlier court ruling in this case that prevented the district from getting a quick win on the FMLA claims.  The issue there was whether the two teaching jobs were equivalent, and all the court said was that they might be.  As it turned out, in the more recent decision, the court neatly sidestepped the issue of whether the two teaching gigs were equivalent under the FMLA.)

Now for the bad news for employers.  This is where the “good deed” quote fits in.Continue Reading No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Fallout From Allowing Excessive Absences