There has been a significant development regarding the rights of employers to terminate an employee who has exhausted a job protected leave of absence. The EEOC has taken the position that if an employee is on a disability leave of absence the employer may not automatically terminate the employee when the legally required leave of absence expires. For example, if an employee is on a FMLA disability leave, once the 12 weeks of FMLA have expired the employer may not use that time limit as a reason to terminate the employee.
The employer is now required to treat a request for additional leave as a request for a "reasonable accommodation" under the American with Disabilities Act. That will require the employer to meet with the employee and engage in an "interactive process" to determine if the employee can grant the additional leave without creating an undue hardship on the employer.
In any case such as this employers should obtain legal advice before terminating an employee whose job protected period of a leave of absence has expired.
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