Situation A – Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 The Family Medical Leave Act, FMLA, requires that a covered employer must provide a qualified employee with twelve weeks of unpaid leave in any twelve-month period to care for oneself or a family member with a serious health condition. The FMLA requires twenty six weeks in any twelve month period for the care of a member of the armed forces. Within this act are a number of conditions and exceptions. A serious health condition that is covered by this act includes pregnancy, prenatal complications, birth of a child, adoption of a child, or fostering a child. The health conditions also include chronic condition, long-term conditions, hospitalization, and ongoing treatment conditions (FMLA). An employee may choose and an employer may require an employee to use any unused sick/medical leave, personal leave, family leave, and vacation for all of the twelve weeks or for however much time employee has in unused leave. The paid sick/medical leave can only be used if such conditions for would otherwise be accepted by the employer as provided in the employer’s handbook. The twelve weeks can be taken continuously, intermittently, or as reduced work schedule. An employer must continue to provide health insurance benefits during the twelve weeks as it would if employee was actively working. Upon returning to work the employer shall provide the employee with the same position or an equivalent position with equivalent pay as the employee had before the leave provided that the employee is still able to perform the duties of the position. A covered employer that qualifies for this requirement is any public agency such as any local, state, or federal government agency, any private sector employer that employs fifty or more employees within seventy five miles of the employee’s worksite, and any public or private elementary or secondary schools of any number of employees. The covered private sector employer is one that employs fifty or more employees who have worked twenty or more work weeks in the current or preceding calendar year. The eligible employee is anyone who works for a covered employer, has worked for the previous twelve months or more for the employer, and has at least 1250 hours of service during the preceding twelve months. An eligible family member is anyone in the employee’s immediate family and to include step-families and anyone that the employee is caring for as a fill in parent whether blood related or not. The facts of the case in Situation A are that the employee requested and took eleven weeks off for the birth of his children. Assuming that Company X is a covered employer as previously detailed and the employee worked for at least 1250 hours in his previous twelve months of employment, it appears that this situation applies to adherence to the Family Medical Leave Act. This means that Company X must provide the employee with his previous position or an equivalent position with equivalent salary. Company X should also have continued to pay its portion of the employee’s health insurance benefits, if applicable. Company X is not required to reimburse the employee for any withheld wages for the eleven week period unless the employee has and wishes to use any unused paid leave. The facts are unclear in this scenario whether there is any unused paid leave for consideration. Given the facts as stated in this situation, the manager for Company X has not violated any portion of the Family Medical Leave Act for refusing to reimburse the employee for withheld wages during his eleven weeks of leave.

Situation B - Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 The Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits employers from discriminating against someone over the age of forty. The Act states that it is unlawful for an employer to deny hiring or promoting an individual based on age. An employer cannot in any other way discriminate against an employee in terms of compensation, benefits, or terms of employment on the basis of age. The Act also states that an employer cannot mandate or enforce a mandatory retirement age for employees or in any other way compel an employee to retire because of age. An exception to this rule is for high-level executives who are sixty-five years old and qualify for a pension.
This law applies to an individual who is forty years old or over. However, an individual can be discriminated against due to age if the other individual is older than the first individual even though the first individual is over forty years old. The Act does allow an employer to attempt to entice an employee to retire with early retirement packages or other incentives. It also allows an employer to discriminate against an individual if the job has a specific age required occupational specification. Employers that are bound to these rules are any that have twenty or more employees including government agencies and including professional partnerships for accountants and lawyers.
Supreme Court decisions over the past ten years have made it increasingly difficult for an individual to prove age discrimination. A court decision in 2009 requires that the employee must prove that the alleged mistreatment was based solely on age and no other factors. In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a city government agency to increase the pay of younger employees by larger margins that the increase in pay of older employees because the agency claimed that this was done in an effort to bring the younger employees’ wages to more market competitive prices.
The case presented in Situation B considers an employer which has promoted a younger employee over an older employee based solely on age. The older employee had better performance review than the younger employee that received the promotion. Attempting to prove that age was the sole reason for the older employee to be passed over would be difficult. However, as the situation is presented, age is claimed to be the reason for the employer’s decision. Based on the facts as presented in Situation B, the employer did violate the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by promoting the younger employee over the older employee based solely on age.

Situation C – Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 The American Disabilities Act states that “No covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment” (“Information and Technical Assistance,” 2009). Any company that has fifteen or more employees that have worked for twenty or more weeks in the past or current year is covered under this Act. An individual with a disability is described as someone who “has a physical or mental impairment that limits one or more major life activities, has record of such impairment, or is regarded as having such impairment” (“Facts About the,” 2008). A major life activity is described as being able to care for oneself and able to perform manual tasks such as being able to see, hear, eat, walk, stand, lift, speak, read, and work. An individual has been discriminated against if with their disability they are still able to perform the tasks of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.
An employer is required to make a job task available to someone with a disability by offering reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodation is described as making changes or adaptions to the work place that does not cause an undue hardship to the employer. Reasonable accommodations include making or adapting physical conditions, modifying computer or electronic equipment, or modifying work schedules to allow the disable person to perform the tasks of the job. Undue hardship is described as being financially prohibitive based on the size of the company.
In the case present in Situation C, the employer denied employment to a wheelchair bond individual because the accommodation necessary to allow her to perform her work would have required the repositioning of the elevator controls. The Act specifies that reasonable accommodations should be made unless they were to present an undue hardship to the company. An undue hardship is anything that would cause the company to lose a significant percentage of their assets. If the changes that are required cost no more than the cost of a minor repair then the accommodation is reasonable and will not cause the company an undue hardship. Inconvenience should not be cause for denying a reasonable accommodation.
Since the disabled person was told that the reason she was not hired was because the company could not make reasonable accommodations for her employment then the company was in violation of the American with Disabilities Act.