Nurse Not Rehired After Leave: No Disability Discrimination.

Nurse Not Rehired After Leave: No Disability Discrimination.

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

May 2017

Unlike FMLA leave, the extended personal leave the hospital granted its nurses came with no guarantee that the nurse’s former job or any other job would be available when the physician released the nurse to return to work. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT PENNSYLVANIA March 24, 2017

A nurse had to take an extended leave for surgery on her foot. She had been having considerable difficulty walking, standing and pushing beds while working in the hospital’s radiology department. The nurse’s manager struggled to cover her slot with part-time nurses while the nurse used up the full twelve weeks of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) medical leave to which she was entitled.

However, once her FMLA leave ran out and the nurse had applied for four additional weeks of personal leave, human resources gave her manager the go-ahead to fill her slot permanently. When her personal leave ran out without the nurse being back at work she was terminated.

The nurse sued for disability discrimination, alleging the hospital failed to accommodate her residual restrictions from her foot surgery. The US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania dismissed her case, on the grounds that her termination was automatic after she was not back at work after her personal leave expired and did not involve any decision-making. It was also relevant to the Court’s ruling that the nurse never notified the hospital she was disabled or asked for any sort of reasonable accommodation for a disability. Calaman v. Carlisle, 2017 WL 1105127 (M.D. Penna., March 24, 2017).