Federal guidance said one thing, the union contract said another - guess which won
A Pennsylvania appeals court has reinstated an arbitration award letting a teacher decide whether to use FMLA leave, reversing a lower court.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled on July 16, 2026, in favor of the union in a fight over how the Freeport Area School District handled a teacher's leave. FMLA - the federal Family and Medical Leave Act - gives workers unpaid, job-protected time off for a serious health condition.
The teacher had been off recovering from surgery since December 2023 and had banked enough paid leave to cover the absence. Even so, the district also ran the clock on her FMLA leave at the same time, on its own. The union that represents the district's professional staff, the Freeport Education Association, PSEA/NEA, filed a grievance. It argued the collective bargaining agreement gave the teacher the choice of whether to tap FMLA, and that the district could not make that call for her.
An arbitrator agreed. Reading the contract alongside the district's own FMLA policy, the arbitrator found that FMLA leave "begins with an employee request" and was a benefit the teacher could claim, not a switch the employer could flip on its own.
The district took the award to county court, which vacated it - struck it down - saying the arbitrator's reading clashed with the FMLA. The union appealed, and the Commonwealth Court came down on the union's side.
This is where it matters for anyone who administers leave. Courts and agencies do not agree on the question. Several federal decisions have held that nothing in the FMLA stops an employee from turning down available leave to save it. The US Department of Labor takes the opposite view in its forms and opinion letters: once a worker asks for leave for an FMLA-eligible reason, the employer must designate and count it.
The court did not settle that split. Instead it applied the deferential "essence test," which asks only whether an arbitrator's award can be rationally drawn from the contract. Because the Labor Department's position was not "well established case law" or "clear precedent" binding in Pennsylvania, the court held the arbitrator was free to read the FMLA the way he did, and let the award stand.
For HR teams, the decision is a reminder that automatic, employer-driven FMLA designation can collide with contract language that hands the choice to the employee, at least where a union agreement is in play.
The court reversed the lower court and reinstated the arbitration award.
