Federal FMLA Rights
The Family and Medical Leave Act: Job-Protected, Unpaid Leave
The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) guarantees eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for specific family and medical reasons. For how this fits alongside DC and Maryland’s own leave laws — including programs that actually pay you during leave — see our Family and Medical Leave overview.
Who Is Covered
Your employer must be a “covered employer” for the FMLA to apply at all:
- Private-sector employers with 50 or more employees, for at least 20 workweeks in the current or preceding calendar year
- Public agencies (federal, state, and local government employers), regardless of size
- Public and private elementary and secondary schools, regardless of size
Who Is Eligible
Even if your employer is covered, you personally need to meet three separate requirements to be eligible for FMLA leave — all three, not just one:
- You’ve worked for your employer for at least 12 months (the months don’t need to be consecutive)
- You’ve worked at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months immediately before your leave starts — this means hours actually worked, not paid time off, vacation, or holidays
- You work at a location where your employer has at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius
A common misconception: working for a large company doesn’t automatically make you eligible. If you work at a small satellite office more than 75 miles from any other location with enough employees to reach the 50-employee threshold, you may not be covered by the FMLA even though your employer overall is a large company.
Qualifying Reasons for Leave
Eligible employees can take up to 12 workweeks of FMLA leave in a defined 12-month period for:
- The birth of a child, and to bond with the newborn (must be completed within 12 months of birth)
- The placement of a child with you for adoption or foster care, and to bond with that child (must be completed within 12 months of placement)
- Caring for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition (not a parent-in-law)
- Your own serious health condition that makes you unable to perform your job
- A qualifying exigency arising from a spouse, child, or parent’s foreign military deployment
A separate, longer category: eligible employees can take up to 26 workweeks in a single 12-month period specifically to care for a covered servicemember (a current servicemember or certain veterans) with a serious injury or illness, if the employee is the servicemember’s spouse, child, parent, or next of kin.
What Counts as a "Serious Health Condition"
This term covers an illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves either inpatient care (an overnight stay in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical facility) or continuing treatment by a health care provider. Both physical and mental health conditions qualify equally — a serious mental health condition requiring ongoing treatment is treated the same as a serious physical condition under the law. Chronic conditions, pregnancy, and conditions requiring multiple treatments can all qualify, even if you’re not currently incapacitated at every moment.
How the 12-Month "Leave Year" Is Calculated
Your 12 weeks aren’t necessarily tied to the calendar year. Employers can choose from several methods to define the applicable 12-month period — including a rolling look-back period measured backward from whenever you actually use leave — as long as they apply the same method consistently to all employees. This matters practically: depending on which method your employer uses, leave you took earlier in the year might “roll off” and become available again sooner or later than you’d expect from a simple calendar-year assumption.
Intermittent Leave and Reduced Schedules
FMLA leave doesn’t have to be taken in one continuous block. Where medically necessary, you can take leave intermittently (in separate periods of time) or on a reduced work schedule for your own or a family member’s serious health condition. For bonding with a new child, however, intermittent leave generally requires your employer’s agreement — it’s not an automatic right the way it is for a serious health condition.
A Limit Worth Knowing If You and Your Spouse Work for the Same Employer
If you and your spouse both work for the same employer, that employer may limit your combined leave to a total of 12 weeks between the two of you — not 12 weeks each — specifically for the birth or placement of a child, or to care for a parent with a serious health condition. This limitation doesn’t apply to leave for your own serious health condition or for a spouse’s serious health condition.
Notice Requirements
You don’t need to specifically invoke “FMLA” by name when requesting leave, but you do need to provide your employer enough information that they’re on notice the leave may be FMLA-qualifying. If your need for leave is foreseeable (a scheduled medical procedure, for example), you generally need to give at least 30 days’ notice. If it isn’t foreseeable, you need to provide notice as soon as practicable under the circumstances.
What Happens to Your Job and Benefits While You're Out
The FMLA’s core guarantee is that you must generally be restored to the same or a virtually identical position when your leave ends. Your employer must also maintain your group health benefits during FMLA leave as though you had continued working, though you remain responsible for your normal share of any premium payments.
The leave itself is unpaid, but you can choose (or your employer can require you) to use accrued paid leave — vacation, sick leave, or PTO — to cover some or all of the FMLA leave period, following your employer’s normal rules for using that paid leave.
Enforcement
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division administers and enforces the FMLA. If you believe your rights have been violated — whether you were wrongly denied leave, not reinstated to an equivalent position, or retaliated against for taking leave — you can file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division or bring a private lawsuit directly.
Talk to an FMLA Attorney
Whether you believe you were wrongly denied FMLA leave, weren’t properly reinstated afterward, or faced retaliation for taking it, Wilkenfeld Law Office can help you understand your rights.
Or call 301.245.3035 · Intake@WilkenfeldLO.com
This article provides general information and is not legal advice. Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Reviewed by Ari Wilkenfeld, Esq. (DC Bar No. 461063; MD Bar No. 9806240300). Ari has over 27 years of experience litigating in federal and state courts, and before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and various arbitration panels. Ari has been recognized by Esquire Magazine as “a famously determined Civil Rights lawyer” and by the New York Post as “a high powered DC Lawyer.” Last updated: August 28, 2026.