Texas: Court OKs Termination of Injured Employee at End of FMLA Leave

An employee who sustained an admitted work-related injury, who was placed on “Family Medical Leave” by the employer while the employee was away from work due to his injuries, and who was terminated upon the expiration of the 12-week FMLA leave, could not recover for retaliatory discharge in spite of the fact that he had not been medically released to return to work. The appellate court held that the employee had presented no evidence that his termination resulted from anything other than the uniform enforcement of a reasonable leave policy. The court acknowledged that an injured employee generally could rely on circumstantial causation evidence to show the employer’s retaliatory motive. The court added, however, that where—as here—the employee’s termination was required by the uniform enforcement of a reasonable absentee policy, then it could not be the case that termination would not have occurred when it did but for the employee’s assertion of a compensation claim or other protected conduct.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Kingsaire, Inc. v. Melendez, 2015 Tex. LEXIS 1083 (Dec. 4, 2015) [2015 Tex. LEXIS 1083 (Dec. 4, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07 [104.07]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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