Legality of reassigning someone on pregnancy leave.

[brainsmile]

My wife, phsyician, had a great medical assistant who was very productive. While they were both on maternity leave her assistant was told that her position had to be filled before she got back. My wife is not sure why there was such urgency since she was not due back for a while.

In truth the administrators didn't like the medical assistant because she didn't conform to new policy changes.

[InfiniteNothing]

Upon return from FMLA leave, an employee must be restored to the employee's original job, or to an equivalent job with equivalent pay, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment.

In addition, an employee's use of FMLA leave cannot result in the loss of any employment benefit that the employee earned or was entitled to before using FMLA leave, nor be counted against the employee under a "no fault" attendance policy.

Under specified and limited circumstances where restoration to employment will cause substantial and grievous economic injury to its operations, an employer may refuse to reinstate certain highly-paid "key" employees after using FMLA leave during which health coverage was maintained. In order to do so, the employer must:

notify the employee of his/her status as a "key" employee in response to the employee's notice of intent to take FMLA leave;
notify the employee as soon as the employer decides it will deny job restoration, and explain the reasons for this decision;
offer the employee a reasonable opportunity to return to work from FMLA leave after giving this notice; and
make a final determination as to whether reinstatement will be denied at the end of the leave period if the employee then requests restoration.
A "key" employee is a salaried "eligible" employee who is among the highest paid ten percent of employees within 75 miles of the work site.
Relevant links
FMLA fact sheet (http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs28.htm)
FMLA overview (http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/fmla/)
Maternity leave overview (http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/pregnancy/pregnantatwork/449.html)

I hope that helps

[brainsmile]

thanks