Pennsylvania court reinstates FMLA award against Freeport school district

An arbitrator agreed. Reading the contract alongside the district’s own FMLA policy, the arbitrator found that FMLA leave “begins with an employee request” and was a benefit the teacher could claim, not a switch the employer could flip on its own.

The district took the award to county court, which vacated it – struck it down – saying the arbitrator’s reading clashed with the FMLA. The union appealed, and the Commonwealth Court came down on the union’s side.

This is where it matters for anyone who administers leave. Courts and agencies do not agree on the question. Several federal decisions have held that nothing in the FMLA stops an employee from turning down available leave to save it. The US Department of Labor takes the opposite view in its forms and opinion letters: once a worker asks for leave for an FMLA-eligible reason, the employer must designate and count it.

The court did not settle that split. Instead it applied the deferential “essence test,” which asks only whether an arbitrator’s award can be rationally drawn from the contract. Because the Labor Department’s position was not “well established case law” or “clear precedent” binding in Pennsylvania, the court held the arbitrator was free to read the FMLA the way he did, and let the award stand.

For HR teams, the decision is a reminder that automatic, employer-driven FMLA designation can collide with contract language that hands the choice to the employee, at least where a union agreement is in play.