What Is the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993?

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a federal law that gives eligible employees unpaid leave for specific family and medical reasons.

It also builds in job-restoration rights and keeps group health coverage running on the same terms as before the leave started.

FMLA leave itself is unpaid. Any pay during that time comes from an employer's own paid-leave policy, from accrued vacation or sick time, or from a state paid-leave program where one exists and applies.

Which Employers Have to Comply With the FMLA?

A private-sector employer is covered once it has employed 50 or more workers in 20 or more workweeks in the current or the preceding calendar year.

Public agencies, including federal, state, and local government employers, and public or private elementary and secondary schools, are covered regardless of how many people they employ.

When Are You Eligible for FMLA Leave?

Beyond working for a covered employer, an eligible employee needs 12 months of employment with that employer, and those months do not have to be consecutive.

A general rule drops work from before a break in service of 7 years or more, unless the gap was for military service or there is a written rehire agreement.

The employee also needs 1,250 hours of service in the 12 months right before leave starts, at a worksite where the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles.

Airline flight crew employees use a different hours test because trip schedules vary from month to month.

They qualify if, in the 12 months before leave, they worked or were paid for at least 60% of their contracted minimum monthly hours and for at least 504 hours total, not counting commute time or time on vacation, medical, or sick leave.

How Much Leave Can You Take, and For What Reasons?

An eligible employee can take up to 12 workweeks of FMLA leave in a 12-month period for any of the following reasons.

• The birth of a child, or placement of a child for adoption or foster care.
• Care for a spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition.
• The employee's own serious health condition.
• A qualifying exigency tied to a family member's covered military duty.

What Extra Leave Applies to Military Families?

A spouse, child, parent, or next of kin of a current servicemember, or of certain veterans, with a serious injury or illness can take up to 26 workweeks of military caregiver leave during a single 12-month period, instead of the standard 12.

Qualifying exigency leave also includes up to 15 calendar days of leave for each instance of a service member's short-term rest-and-recuperation leave during deployment, and it can only be used while the service member is actually on that R&R leave.

Can You Take FMLA Leave in Smaller Pieces?

Leave for a serious health condition, the employee's own or a family member's, can be taken intermittently or on a reduced schedule whenever that is medically necessary, and the employer cannot withhold agreement to it.

Leave to bond with a healthy newborn or newly placed child works differently: intermittent or reduced-schedule use for that reason is allowed only if the employee and the employer agree to it first.

What Happens to Your Health Coverage While You're Out?

Group health coverage continues during FMLA leave on the same terms as if the employee had kept working, including family coverage if it was already in place.

Example (hypothetical): Jessica is nine months pregnant and her doctor orders bed rest for high blood pressure. Taking FMLA leave lets her keep her group health coverage running at the same cost-sharing she already had, even though her paycheck stops for the unpaid weeks.

If an employee does not return to work once FMLA leave ends, the employer can bill the employee for its share of the premiums it paid during the unpaid leave.

That recovery does not apply when the employee cannot return because a covered serious health condition continues, recurs, or begins, or because of other circumstances outside the employee's control, such as being laid off while on leave.

Is Your Job Held While You're on Leave?

At the end of FMLA leave, an employee has the right to go back to the same job or to an equivalent one, meaning the same pay and benefits and an equivalent schedule at the same or a nearby worksite, not a lesser substitute.

Example (hypothetical): Jane, a reporter, takes 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA leave after her son is born. Her old beat was reassigned while she was out, so her employer places her in another reporting role with the same pay and the same benefits.

Do Other Benefits Keep Building While You're Out?

An employee does not build up additional vacation, sick time, or seniority during unpaid FMLA leave, but whatever had already accrued before the leave started is waiting on return.

For retirement plan purposes, unpaid FMLA leave does not count as a break in service for vesting or eligibility, though the leave period itself does not have to count as credited service toward the plan's own benefit-accrual formula.

Can You Use Paid Vacation or Sick Time Instead of Unpaid Leave?

An employee can choose, or an employer can require, that accrued paid leave such as vacation or sick time run alongside what would otherwise be unpaid FMLA leave.

Doing so does not add extra weeks beyond the 12 or 26-week FMLA entitlement; it only changes whether those weeks are paid.

Example (hypothetical): Kenneth takes 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for his newly adopted daughter. He had 8 days of vacation and 3 sick days saved up, and his employer requires him to use that paid time first, so about 11 workdays, a little over 2 weeks, are paid and the rest of his 12 weeks are unpaid.

How Much Notice and Paperwork Does FMLA Require?

An employee must give at least 30 days' notice before FMLA leave begins when the need for leave is foreseeable, such as a scheduled surgery or an expected birth.

When 30 days isn't practical, notice is due as soon as practicable instead.

An employer can ask for medical certification supporting the need for leave, and must give the employee 15 calendar days to provide it.

What Can You Do If Your FMLA Rights Are Violated?

The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division administers and enforces the FMLA for most employees, and a worker can file a complaint there or bring a private lawsuit instead.

A lawsuit generally has to be filed within 2 years of the last violation; that window stretches to 3 years if the violation was willful.

Does Your State Pay You During Leave?

The Department of Labor counts 13 states and the District of Columbia with paid family and medical leave laws, and 12 of those states plus DC are paying benefits in 2026: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.

Delaware and Minnesota started paying benefits on January 1, 2026, and Maine followed on May 1, 2026.

Maryland has enacted a program, but a 2025 delay pushed it back: contributions begin January 1, 2027, and benefits do not start until January 1, 2028, so Maryland is not paying benefits in 2026.

Getting paid under a state program does not, on its own, hold a job the way the FMLA does.

California's wage-replacement program, for example, pairs with a separate California law that holds a worker's job, the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), which covers employers with 5 or more employees, a lower bar than the FMLA's 50.

Check both the paid-leave program rules and whichever job-restoration law applies where the employee works.

Can a Union Contract Change Your AT&T Leave Terms?

AT&T employs tens of thousands of workers under collective bargaining agreements that can add benefit terms the FMLA floor does not cover. A 2025 tentative agreement for CWA District 6 AT&T Southwest employees added 1% pension band increases for 2026 through 2029, kept the traditional pension's lump sum option intact, and moved about 5,000 Savings and Security Plan participants toward the Retirement Savings Plan. Ask your own CWA or IBEW local whether a similar agreement changes your pension, 401(k) or leave terms.

Could Your AT&T 401(k) Plan Change While You're on Leave?

AT&T has also been moving bargained employees between its two 401(k) plans in 2026: about 60% of Savings and Security Plan participants moved to the Retirement Savings Plan effective January 1, 2026, with roughly $1.3 billion in balances transferred, and the remaining bargained participants are scheduled to move on October 1, 2026. A bargained employee returning from FMLA leave this year may find their account sits in a different plan than the one they left.