Takeaway: 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a former employee’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) claim, even though her employer did not notify her of her rights and responsibilities under the FMLA, because no harm came to the employee as a result of the lack of notification.
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires that an employee actually seek leave to trigger an employer’s obligation to give “eligibility and rights-and-responsibilities notice,” the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently held.
A plaintiff was unable to show harm resulting from her employer’s noncompliance with the FMLA notice requirement. The plaintiff’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim was also dismissed because she could not prove that her firing was because of her association with a disabled person.
The plaintiff began working at Brandstar Studios in Deerfield Beach, Fla., as a content producer and writer in January 2017. On May 2, 2018, she emailed her supervisor, stating that she was leaving immediately to tend to her out-of-state father, who needed emergency brain surgery. She thanked the company “for making any adjustments to my schedule” as necessary, according to the court. The plaintiff returned to Florida on May 6 and “verbally requested to be excused from work-related travel and staffed only to local shoots” as she prepared for her father to move to Florida.
On May 25, the plaintiff met with her supervisor, a studio manager and a human resources assistant, and they suggested that she “transition” from a full-time job to a freelance position, the court said. The plaintiff “declined the offer and asked whether this had to do with her father, to which the company executives answered that it didn’t,” the court noted. The plaintiff was terminated effective May 30, 2018.
Legal Action
The plaintiff sued Brandstar, alleging violations of the FMLA and the ADA. After the district court granted summary judgment to Brandstar, the plaintiff appealed, arguing that: 1) Company executives interfered with her rights under the FMLA, 2) her termination constituted associational discrimination under the ADA and 3) the district court improperly weighed the evidence on summary judgment.
The court held that the plaintiff clearly met the eligibility requirements for FMLA benefits. The plaintiff alleged Brandstar failed to provide her with notice of certain statutory rights, which constituted “actionable interference” with her FMLA benefits. To recover on an “interference” claim under the FMLA, the court said a plaintiff must show that: 1) She was entitled to an FMLA benefit, 2) her employer denied her that benefit and 3) she suffered “harm, or prejudice, resulting from the employer’s interference with her exercise (or attempted exercise) of an FMLA benefit.”
An employer must provide an employee with an eligibility and a rights-and-responsibilities notice when either the employee requests FMLA leave or the employer becomes aware that an employee’s leave may be for an FMLA-qualifying reason. The plaintiff contended that she sought FMLA-qualifying leave in two instances that triggered Brandstar’s notice obligations: 1) her May 2 email requesting leave for her father’s surgery and 2) a May 6 email and verbal communications requesting to be excused from work-related travel.
The court said that it was undisputed that Brandstar failed to provide the plaintiff with the required notice following her May 2 email. However, the court also said that to recover on her interference claim, the plaintiff must show that Brandstar’s failure caused her harm, which she was unable to do. The parties agreed that Brandstar provided the plaintiff with the leave she requested in her May 2 email and that she received full pay for those days. “An employee doesn’t suffer harm from an employer’s technical noncompliance with the FMLA’s notice requirements when she receives all her requested time off and is paid for her absences,” the court held.
The plaintiff also contended that her May 6 email, in which she asked for ongoing flexibility to prepare her home for her father, triggered Brandstar’s obligation to provide an FMLA notice. The court disagreed, holding that the plaintiff’s “email didn’t trigger Brandstar’s obligation to notify her of her eligibility and rights and responsibilities under the FMLA. We conclude that the district court didn’t err in granting summary judgment to Brandstar” on the plaintiff’s FMLA claim.
Under the ADA, an employer is prohibited from discriminating against an employee who is associated with someone who has major medical needs and for whom the employee may need to provide care. The court rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the district court was wrong in rejecting her associational-discrimination claim because she “failed to adduce sufficient evidence … that [Brandstar’s] proffered, nondiscriminatory reasons for her termination were pretextual” and related to her father’s illness.
Lastly, the plaintiff alleged that the district court improperly weighed the evidence in Brandstar’s favor when deciding Brandstar’s summary-judgment motion. Having concluded that the record supports the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Brandstar on both the FMLA and ADA claims, the appellate court noted there was no need for it to address this issue.
Graves v. Brandstar Inc., 11th Cir., No. 21-13469 (May 9, 2023).
D.M. Fera is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area.
