Cities may owe more than they think – are your 24-hour schedules compliant?
Massachusetts Appeals Court clarifies military-leave pay: forty non-consecutive 24-hour days count; HR should align tracking, CBAs, and pay practices.
On November 21, 2025, the Massachusetts Appeals Court reversed a lower court and clarified how public employers must pay eligible employees on military leave under G. L. c. 33, § 59(a). In Robert Driscoll v. City of Melrose (No. 24-P-1114), the court held that employees are entitled to full civilian pay for up to forty 24-hour periods of qualifying military service in any federal fiscal year, and those days need not be consecutive. For employees who work 24-hour tours, such as firefighters, a single 24-hour shift counts as one “day,” even if a collective bargaining agreement divides it into day and night segments.
The dispute arose from Melrose’s handling of firefighter Robert Driscoll’s military leave. Driscoll served as a city firefighter from 2002 until his retirement in October 2022 and concurrently as an officer in the Air National Guard. By agreement, the department’s 24-hour tours ran from 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. and were internally split into a 10-hour day segment and a 14-hour night segment for certain leave purposes. Between October 2019 and 2021, Driscoll missed multiple 24-hour tours for training and an extended active-duty deployment. After exchanges over pay, the city compensated him for twenty 24-hour tours per federal fiscal year.
Driscoll sought a declaratory judgment that the statute required full pay for forty 24-hour tours per federal fiscal year. A Superior Court judge granted summary judgment to the city, reasoning the statute limited full pay to a consecutive 40-day block and that a 24-hour tour counted as two days. On appeal, a panel of Chief Justice Blake and Justices Ditkoff and Brennan disagreed and reversed.
Writing for the court, Justice Ditkoff focused on the statute’s text. Section 59(a) grants full pay for “not exceeding 40 days in any federal fiscal year” and defines “day” as “any 24-hour period regardless of calendar day.” The court concluded there is no requirement that those days be consecutive and that a 24-hour firefighter tour counts as one day for § 59(a) purposes. The panel rejected reliance on an older case that interpreted a prior version of the law, noting the Legislature rewrote § 59 in 2014 and removed the earlier language.
For HR leaders in Massachusetts public entities that have adopted § 59, the operational impact is immediate. Paid military leave under § 59(a) must be measured in 24-hour periods, not calendar days or internal split shifts. The forty-day cap applies across the federal fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30. That framework directly affects departments with 24-hour staffing and employees who serve intermittently in the National Guard or reserves, as well as those called to longer active-duty tours.
This decision also underscores the importance of aligning collective bargaining agreements, policies, and payroll systems with the statute’s definitions. If a CBA treats parts of a 24-hour tour as separate “days” for vacation or sick leave, that accounting does not govern military-leave pay under § 59(a). HR teams should confirm timekeeping can track 24-hour periods that span two calendar days, apply the forty-day cap across the federal fiscal year, and document intermittent service accurately.
The bottom line: the judgment for the city was reversed, and the Appeals Court clarified how to count paid military-leave days. HR should update tracking and pay practices now to match the statute’s 24-hour-day rule and non-consecutive cap.
