In January 2008, President Bush signed a law that expanded the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for the first time in 15 years. The new law provides two expansions of the FMLA to provide leave to military service members and their families. The new law requires FMLA-covered employers to provide up to 12 weeks of leave within a 12-month period for a qualifying “exigency” connected to the active duty status of an employee’s spouse, son, daughter or parent. The expanded law also entitles eligible family members to take up to 26 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a wounded member of the Armed Forces.

Examples of qualifying exigency leave may include:

• Arranging for childcare
• Seeing a child or spouse off/or welcoming home ceremony
• Attending pre-deployment briefings
• Attending family support meetings
• Attending reintegration briefings

FMLA Overview
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is a federal law that provides job security to employees who request time off for a family or medical reason. Employers that have 50 or more employees are required to offer qualified employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for family and medical responsibilities. An employee may use FMLA leave to care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition, for the birth or adoption of a child, or because the employee is unable to work because of the employee's own serious heath condition.

Employers must provide the following to employees taking FMLA leave:

• Continue health benefits
• Permit intermittent leave
• Restore employee to same or equivalent job upon return from leave

Additional information and a copy of the amended FMLA law are available on the FMLA NDAA Web site.