Suppose you have an employee who requests medical leave because she has a medical condition that, she claims, interferes with her ability to do her job. In the course of determining whether this time off qualifies as protected family and medical leave, you discover that she is continuing to work for another employer, performing similar duties. Does this mean you can automatically deny her family and medical leave and order her to return to work? Not necessarily, according to a new ruling from the California Supreme Court.
The case involved Antonina Lonicki, who was a technician in the sterile processing department of Sutter Health Central in Roseville (near Sacramento). Lonicki performed the same work duties at a second job on weekends for Kaiser Permanente. Over time, Lonicki alleged, her Sutter Health workload increased and became hectic, and she requested leave from Sutter Health because of the stress. In light of difficulties obtaining health provider information confirming that Lonicki had a serious health condition, Sutter Health approved the leave as paid time off, but not as family and medical leave. Eventually, Sutter Health ordered Lonicki back to work—and she was fired when she didn’t return.
Lonicki claimed that Sutter Health violated the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) by refusing to approve CFRA leave. Sutter Health argued that because Lonicki could continue working at her Kaiser job, she didn’t really have a serious health condition and didn’t qualify for CFRA leave.
The California Supreme Court has now ruled 4-3 that when a serious health condition prevents an employee from doing an assigned position’s tasks, this doesn’t necessarily indicate that the employee is incapable of doing a similar job for another employer. Said the high court: “By way of illustration: A job in the emergency room of a hospital that commonly treats a high volume of life-threatening injuries may be far more stressful than similar work in the emergency room of a hospital that sees relatively few such injuries.” The Supreme Court did make clear, however, that Lonicki’s ability to work part-time for Kaiser while claiming the need for medical leave from Sutter Health was nevertheless “strong evidence that she was capable of doing her full-time job at [Sutter Health’s] Roseville hospital.”
In better news for employers, the Supreme Court also ruled that Sutter Health wasn’t precluded from disputing that Lonicki had a serious medical condition because it had denied her leave request based on insufficient information in a nurse practitioner’s note and didn’t follow CFRA procedures to obtain second and third medical opinions.
In an upcoming issue of California Employer Advisor, we’ll have full details on this ruling and what it means for your CFRA procedures.
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Check out our “Compliance Guide to the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the California Family Rights Act.” This exclusive Special Report is designed to make your job easier by pulling together the essentials of the family leave laws that you need to know. It includes a summary of the family leave regulations, detailed explanations of your and your employees’ rights and obligations, and a sample medical certification form.