10.3 FMLA, ADA, Leave, Accommodation, and Medical Confidentiality

Two Laws, One Scenario

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) frequently appear together. An employee may have absences, restrictions, treatment needs, or a return-to-work issue. The PHR skill is recognizing that attendance or performance facts can also trigger a protected-leave or accommodation process before discipline is even considered.

FMLA Mechanics

FMLA gives an eligible employee of a covered employer up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for qualifying reasons (own serious health condition; care for a spouse, child, or parent with one; birth/placement and bonding; qualifying military exigency), and up to 26 weeks for military caregiver leave. Group-health benefits continue on the same terms as if the employee kept working, and the employee is reinstated to the same or an equivalent job.

HR must follow the employer's FMLA process — eligibility notice, rights-and-responsibilities notice, designation notice, and certification — rather than reacting to a hallway conversation. Interference (denying or chilling leave) and retaliation (punishing its use) are the two prohibited acts the exam targets.

ADA and the Interactive Process

The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation for a qualified individual with a disability unless it imposes undue hardship (significant difficulty or expense). Accommodations can include modified schedules, leave, equipment, job restructuring, reassignment to a vacant position, or policy adjustments. The interactive process is a good-faith, individualized dialogue: identify the barrier and essential functions, gather only the functional medical information needed, explore options, and confirm the accommodation is effective. HR cannot deny a request just because another employee never needed the same thing.

Overlap, Confidentiality, and Traps

FMLA and ADA are distinct but overlap. Exhausting 12 weeks of FMLA does not automatically end the analysis — additional leave or another accommodation may be a reasonable ADA accommodation, so automatic termination at FMLA exhaustion is a classic wrong answer. Conversely, an accommodation request does not erase performance expectations, but HR pauses to evaluate protected rights before acting.

Confidentiality is mandatory. Medical documentation is kept separate from the general personnel file with restricted access; supervisors receive only the work-related restrictions needed to schedule or assign duties — never the diagnosis or full history.

Worked Example

A manager is frustrated by an employee's repeated Friday absences and wants to issue a final warning. Intake reveals the absences track a chronic condition requiring intermittent treatment. The PHR-correct path is to provide FMLA certification, evaluate intermittent leave and any ADA schedule accommodation, and not discipline the protected absences — while still managing any genuinely unrelated, unprotected attendance issues consistently.

FMLA Notice and Certification Mechanics

The FMLA runs on a notice exchange that HR must manage on a clock. Within 5 business days of learning of a potentially qualifying need, the employer provides the eligibility notice and the rights-and-responsibilities notice. The employer may require a medical certification, giving the employee at least 15 calendar days to return it. Once HR has enough information, it issues a designation notice telling the employee whether the leave counts against the FMLA entitlement. Skipping these notices is interference, even if the employee ultimately receives the leave.

Employers may choose one of four methods to define the 12-month period (calendar year, fixed year, measured-forward, or the rolling 12-month "look-back" method). The rolling method is common because it prevents employees from stacking two years of leave back to back. Intermittent leave — taken in separate blocks or on a reduced schedule — is permitted for a serious health condition and for medical needs, and the employer can require recertification at reasonable intervals.

ADA Definitions and the "Regarded As" Trap

Under the ADA, a disability is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having one. The ADA Amendments Act broadened "substantially limits" so HR should not get stuck litigating whether a condition is severe enough; the analysis quickly moves to accommodation. A qualified individual is someone who can perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation — which is why an accurate, current job description listing essential functions is the anchor document of any accommodation analysis.

Three ADA traps recur. First, requiring an employee to be "100% healed" before returning is itself a likely violation because it skips the individualized accommodation analysis. Second, an indefinite or open-ended leave request can be an undue hardship, but a finite, definite extension often is not — so HR evaluates rather than auto-denies. Third, accommodation is prospective: an employer need not excuse past misconduct or poor performance, but it must accommodate going forward.

Pairing accurate job descriptions, a documented interactive process, and strict medical confidentiality is the operational core every PHR leave-and-accommodation item rewards.