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See also: Parental leave

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993(Pub.L. 103-3, enacted February 5, 1993) is a United States labor law allowing an employee to take unpaid leave due to a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform his job or to care for a sick family member or to care for a new son or daughter (including by birth, adoption or foster care). The bill, authored by Chris Dodd,^[1] was among the first signed into law by President Bill Clinton in his first term, fulfilling a campaign promise.

The law recognizes the growing needs of balancing family, work, and obligations and promises numerous protections to workers. Some of these protections include:

• Twelve (12) workweeks of leave per twelve (12) months for various reasons such as
  • Caring for the birth, adoption, or foster care placement issues
  • Caring for a sick child, spouse or parent
  • Being physically unable to perform one's job
• Restoration to the same position upon return to work. If the same position is unavailable, the employer must provide the worker with a position that is substantially equal in pay, benefits, and responsibility.
• Protection of employee benefits even while on leave. An employee is entitled to reinstatement of all benefits to which the employee was entitled before going on leave.
• Protection of the employee to not have their rights under the Act interfered with or denied by an employer.
• Protection of the employee from retaliation by an employer for exercising rights under the Act.

Generally, the Act ensures that all workers are able to take extended leaves of absence from work to handle family issues or illness without fear of being terminated from their jobs by their employers or being forced into a lower job upon their return.

The leave guaranteed by the act is unpaid, and is available to those working for employers with 50 or more employees within a 75 mile radius. In addition, an employee must have worked for the company at least 12 months and 1,250 hours in those 12 months. The benefits provided by the Act are not as generous to employees as policies in some other countries, such as Sweden. Swedish parental leave provides an unusually generous 480 days (16 months) of paid leave (80% or more of wage) with similar right of return protections as its American counterpart.

The act also applies to all U.S. government employees and state employees. In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, upheld FMLA coverage for state employees in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs. The state of Nevada had unsuccessfully challenged the provisions under the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The U.S. Code cite is 29 U.S.C. sec. 2601.

The act was drafted by the National Partnership for Women and Families (formerly known as the Women's Legal Defense Fund) a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that states that its mission is to use public education and advocacy to promote fairness in the workplace, quality health care, and policies that help women meet the dual demands of work and family.

Certain critics of the act have suggested that, by mandating various forms of leave that are used more often by female than male employees, the Act, like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, makes women more expensive to employ than men. They argue that, in response, employers will engage in subtle discrimination against women in the hiring process, discrimination which is much less obvious to detect than pregnancy discrimination against the already hired. Supporters counter that the act, in contrast to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, is aimed at both women and men, and is part of an overall strategy to encourage both men and women to take family-related leave in equal proportions. Indeed, if men and women took leave equally often, neither sex would be more expensive to employ under the Act.

• Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
• Full Text of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 - FMLA - 29 U.S. Code Chapter 28
• Senate roll call vote
• House roll call vote
• Nevada Dept. of Human Resources v. Hibbs
• A Child's Wish at the Internet Movie Database (A made-for-TV film about the act in which President Clinton appears briefly as himself.)