Ninth Circuit Holds that Employer Must Show Reasons for Denying Reinstatement After FMLA Leave

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that an employer has the burden of establishing a legitimate reason for not reinstating an employee to her former position following leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and that the employee need not demonstrate her employer lacked a reasonable basis for its refusal.  Sanders v. City of Newport, No. 08-35996 (9th Cir. Mar. 17, 2011).

FMLA entitles employees to take up to 12 workweeks of job protected leave for a qualifying reason and to return to the same or an equivalent position at the end of the leave. The statute prohibits employers from interfering with the exercise of FMLA rights.

Diane Sanders worked as a utility billing clerk for the City of Newport for approximately 10 years. Sanders began to suffer health problems when the City started to use a new type of billing paper. After consulting with a medical specialist who diagnosed a multiple-chemical sensitivity triggered by handling the paper, Sanders requested and received FMLA leave.

While on leave, the City notified Sanders that she needed “to present a fitness-for-duty certificate from [her] physician prior to being restored to employment.” Sander's doctor faxed a letter to the City stating that she could return to work, so long as she avoided using the problem-causing paper, which the City had stopped using during Sanders’s leave. However, the City then terminated Sanders’s employment because it could not guarantee that her workplace would be safe due to her chemical sensitivity.

Sanders sued the City for, among other things, interfering with her FMLA right to reinstatement. The case went to trial, and the jury was instructed that Sanders must prove that “she was denied reinstatement or discharged from employment without reasonable cause after she took family medical leave.” The jury returned a verdict for the City, and Sanders appealed, arguing that the jury instructions wrongly placed the burden of proof on her. The Ninth Circuit found that based on the plain language of the DOL regulations, the burden of proof is on the employer to show it had a legitimate reason to deny reinstatement.

The Court further explained that by including reasonable cause language in the jury instruction, the jury was erroneously permitted to assess the City’s overall response to Sanders’s medical issues rather than focusing on the specific reasons under DOL regulations for the City’s refusal to reinstate Sanders. The instruction, the Ninth Circuit concluded, prejudiced Sanders because it added a reasonable cause requirement to her burden of proof. Accordingly, the Court ordered a new trial on the FMLA claim. Thus, while the right to reinstatement from FMLA leave is not absolute, an employer who denies reinstatement to an employee must be prepared to prove the employee had no such right.