President Bush has signed the Defense Authorization Act.  This is significant for employers, because this Act contains amendments to the Family and Medical Leave Act, the first amendments to the law since it was enacted in 1993.

These amendments give additional leave to employees who have family members in the military.  In fact, the amendments create two new categories of FMLA leave:

(1) Leave during a family member’s active duty–Employees who have a spouse, parent or child on active duty in the Armed Forces may take up to 12 weeks of FMLA leave yearly when they experience a “qualifying exigency.”  The Department of Labor will issue regulations that define “qualifying exigency,” and in the meantime, you need to make a good faith effort to comply with this new requirement.  That may be difficult when you don’t know exactly what a key term means, so consulting with legal counsel when you are faced with a request for FMLA leave on this basis is critical.

(2) Injured servicemember leave–Employees who are the spouse, parent, child or next of kin of a servicemember who has a serious illness or injury arising out of being on active duty may take up to 26 weeks of leave to care for the injured servicemember in one 12-month period.  Employees may take injured servicemember leave intermittently but must use it up within 12 months.  Presumably, DOL regs will deal with this new kind of FMLA leave as well.

For more information, check out Jon Hyman’s blog and the blog published by Dan Schwartz.