The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which includes Alabama, Florida and Georgia, has provided further guidance under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in the November 2000 decision in Cash v. Smith. An employee of the company for more than a decade, Cash had suffered from various medical problems for years without any adverse effect on her performance on the job. Then she was diagnosed with diabetes and a seizure disorder at about the same time as Smith replaced her former supervisor in the print shop.
Cash claimed that she told Smith about her diagnosis of diabetes in confidence, and that Smith told other employees, thus violating her confidence. She also began missing work more frequently. Once she exhausted all of her paid leave for the year, Smith let her take unpaid leave whenever she requested. After some months and more absences, Smith contacted the company’s disability management department to determine what to do. Cash was then asked to complete the company’s standard FMLA paperwork so that the company could determine if her medical problems were serious enough to justify FMLA leave. Cash’s personal physician filled out the forms, noting that she was not disabled and did not require FMLA leave.
Because Cash had not completed an important project she had been assigned, and because she volunteered to assume typesetting duties when a typesetter resigned, Smith reassigned her to that position. Her former position was included in a posting for a new position, for which Cash, along with 12 others, applied but was not chosen. She contended that she was the victim of discrimination under both the FMLA and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Her FMLA claim was that she was removed from her former position and not given the new position for which she applied in retaliation for taking time off from work for medical reasons.
The Court of Appeals observed that “employers have a statutory right to require an employee requesting FMLA leave to obtain certification” from a health care provider that the employee is eligible for such leave. Cash’s own physician said that her conditions did not qualify for FMLA because they were controlled by medication and she was able to perform the functions of her job. Thus, her medical leave was not FMLA leave.
Cash also alleged that Smith violated the nondisclosure provisions of the FMLA and the ADA by telling co-workers of her diabetes. Because the information Smith imparted was not the result of an examination which the company ordered, but rather based on what Cash had told her voluntarily, there was no cause of action. The statutes and the regulations implementing them “do not govern voluntary disclosures initiated by the employee.”
Regardless of the fact that no cause of action arose from such a disclosure, managers should be strongly discouraged from imparting medical information about one employee to other employees, unless there is a legitimate need to know. And every employer should take care to be sure that all medical records of any sort are filed separately from personnel records, in a place and under circumstances where they are not available to anyone but those with a legitimate need to know.
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