Earlier this year, the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued a split decision involving a number of claims by Motorola employees involving the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Six employees claimed that their supervisors at Motorola’s Rockford, Illinois facility penalized them for taking leave under FMLA.
The employees claimed they were demoted, denied raises, questioned upon return from leave and given negative performance evaluations. To support their allegations they offered declarations from 23 others who claimed that Motorola discriminated against persons using FMLA leave.
The plaintiffs sued Motorola and several individual defendants claiming discrimination and retaliation in violation of FMLA and intentional infliction of emotional distress under Illinois law. The district court granted Motorola summary judgment on the FMLA claims and ruled that the intentional infliction of emotional distress claims were preempted by FMLA.
Upon appeal, the 7th Circuit reversed the summary judgment on two of the FMLA claims but affirmed the others because the plaintiffs failed to show that they were subjected to adverse actions or that actions were taken on account of their exercise of FMLA rights. The court did not address the question of whether FMLA preempts the intentional infliction of emotional distress claims because it rejected the appeal on the grounds that the plaintiffs were not subjected to extreme and outrageous conduct.
One of the claims sent back to the lower court for further deliberations involved an employee whose duties were reassigned while he was on FMLA leave. When he returned to work he was placed in a different position, with the same pay and benefits but with more manual tasks, less prestige and reduced opportunities for promotion. Motorola argued that the position was equivalent, but the 7th Circuit Court disagreed, stating that the test for equivalence is strict.
Motorola also argued that the position had been eliminated. The court interpreted FMLA to mean that if an employee’s position is eliminated while on FMLA leave for reasons unrelated to the taking of leave, the employee has no right to reinstatement.
One of the employer representatives stated “in our service business it’s hard to hold positions open when we’ve got to take care of customers every day. So we found a way of working through it.” The court said that this explanation strongly suggests that Motorola had no business justification for eliminating the position apart from the fact that the employee had taken leave. The court indicated that if Motorola simply restructured his position to accommodate his absence then he would have been entitled to reinstatement.
The other claim sent back to the lower court for further deliberations involved an employee whose supervisor told her that her request for tuition reimbursement had been denied because of her use of FMLA leave. The district court assumed that tuition reimbursements were purely discretionary when it dismissed the claim.
An earlier 7th Circuit Court case stated the “denial of a monetary perk, such as a bonus or reimbursement of certain expenses, does not constitute an adverse employment action if it is wholly within the employer’s discretion to grant or deny and is not a component of the employee’s salary.” In reviewing this case, the court noted that Motorola provided no evidence to that effect. The court therefore concluded that Motorola’s tuition reimbursement was an entitlement.
The plaintiffs also presented several pages alleged to be email correspondence between Motorola managers that outlined a scheme to retaliate against those who used FMLA leave and named the plaintiffs as targets of the scheme. The authenticity of these documents was heavily disputed but the district court did not rule on that question because it found the plaintiffs had not suffered adverse employment actions. The court will now have to evaluate the contested emails.
The case is James P. Breneisen, Jr., et al., v. Motorola, Inc., et al.
