Can You Be Fired While on a Leave of Absence?

Yes, you can be fired while on a leave of absence, but whether that termination is legal depends on why you took the leave and why your employer let you go. Federal law protects certain leaves from being the reason for a firing, and violating those protections can expose an employer to real liability. Everything else falls back on at-will employment, which lets either side end the job at any time for almost any reason that isn’t illegal.¹

The rest of this article walks through the laws that shield your job during leave, the situations where a firing during leave is still lawful, and the signs that point to an illegal termination.

Federal Laws That Protect Your Job During Leave

Several federal statutes override at-will employment for employees who take leave for qualifying reasons. Each has its own eligibility rules, and they sometimes overlap.

Family and Medical Leave Act

The FMLA is the broadest federal leave protection. It provides up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period for the birth or placement of a child, caring for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, or your own serious health condition. A separate provision allows up to 26 workweeks of military caregiver leave when a family member has a serious service-related injury or illness.²

To qualify, you must have worked for your employer for at least 12 months, logged at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months before the leave starts, and work at a location where the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles.² That 50-employee threshold leaves a lot of workers at smaller companies without FMLA protection.

When you return, your employer must put you back in the same job or one with equivalent pay, benefits, and working conditions.² Your group health coverage continues during the leave on the same terms as if you had never stopped working.³

Americans with Disabilities Act

The ADA requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities, and leave counts as one of those accommodations.⁴ Unlike the FMLA, the ADA does not set a fixed number of weeks. An employer must grant leave unless it can show that doing so would create an undue hardship on the business.

When a disability-related leave ends, the employer must hold your job open unless keeping it open would impose undue hardship. Even if you cannot provide an exact return date, the employer cannot automatically deny leave. Recovery does not always follow neat timetables, and an approximate return date can be enough unless the employer shows that the uncertainty itself creates undue hardship.⁵ Penalizing an employee for using leave as an accommodation violates the ADA.⁴

Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

The PWFA, which took effect in 2023, requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations for limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. Paid and unpaid leave are explicitly listed as possible accommodations. An employer cannot force you to take leave when another effective accommodation exists, and it cannot retaliate against you for requesting an accommodation.⁶ The PWFA fills a gap for pregnant employees who don’t qualify for FMLA leave because they haven’t been with their employer long enough or work at a smaller company.

USERRA for Military Leave

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act offers some of the strongest leave protections in federal law. If you leave a civilian job for military service, USERRA requires your employer to reemploy you in the position you would have held had you remained continuously employed, with full seniority.⁷ You get the job you would have grown into, not just the one you left.

USERRA also restricts termination after you return. If your service lasted 181 days or more, your employer cannot fire you without cause for one full year after reemployment. For service lasting 31 to 180 days, that protection runs for 180 days.⁷ USERRA applies to virtually all employers, regardless of size.

When an Employer Can Legally Fire You During Leave

Protected leave makes firing you harder, not impossible. The protection shields you from being terminated because of the leave, not from every termination that happens to occur during it.

Layoffs and Business Restructuring

If your employer eliminates your position in a legitimate reduction in force, being on FMLA leave does not save the job. The obligation to maintain your benefits and hold your position ends when the employment relationship would have terminated regardless of the leave, such as when your entire department is shut down.³ The test is whether the employer would have made the same decision if you had been at your desk that day.

Misconduct or Performance Problems

Performance issues documented before your leave started remain fair game. If you were already on a performance improvement plan or under investigation for a policy violation, the employer does not lose the right to act on those findings because you went on leave. The same goes for misconduct the employer discovers during your absence, such as fraud that surfaces in an audit. The employer must show that the termination was driven by the misconduct, not by the leave.

Failure to Meet FMLA Requirements

The FMLA imposes obligations on you as well. For foreseeable leave, you must give at least 30 days’ advance notice when possible.⁸ You don’t have to use the words “FMLA leave,” but you must give enough information for the employer to recognize the leave may qualify.²

Your employer can also require medical certification. If you fail to provide it within 15 calendar days of the request, absent extenuating circumstances, the employer can deny FMLA protection until you produce it. If you never produce it, the leave is not treated as FMLA leave. When your leave ends, the employer can require a fitness-for-duty certification before letting you return, and can terminate you if you don’t provide one.⁹

Exhausted Leave Entitlement

FMLA protection lasts 12 weeks, or 26 for military caregiver leave. Once you’ve used that time, the FMLA no longer requires your employer to hold your job. Whether you can extend depends on the ADA if a disability is involved, on state law, or on your employer’s policies. Many terminations that appear to happen “during” leave actually occur after the protected entitlement runs out, and that distinction matters.

When Termination During Leave Is Illegal

The line between a lawful and unlawful firing often comes down to the employer’s true motivation. Agencies and courts look at patterns and timing, not just stated reasons.

Retaliation and Interference

An employer cannot fire, demote, discipline, or otherwise punish you for requesting or using protected leave. Under the FMLA, this splits into two categories: interference (preventing or discouraging you from taking leave) and retaliation (adverse action because you took it). Counting FMLA absences under a no-fault attendance policy is interference, because it penalizes you for exercising a right the law guarantees.¹⁰

The ADA has parallel protections. Requesting a reasonable accommodation, including leave, is protected activity, and retaliating against someone for making the request is independently unlawful.¹¹

Suspicious Timing

Timing is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in a wrongful termination case. When a firing comes shortly after a leave request or a return from leave, that proximity alone can help establish that the leave was a motivating factor. An employer who fires someone two weeks after they return from FMLA leave has a much harder time explaining the decision than one who acts six months later. A long gap doesn’t automatically clear the employer, though. Other evidence of retaliatory motive, such as disparaging comments about the leave, can bridge the gap.¹¹

Discriminatory Treatment

Firing an employee on disability-related leave while letting other employees take extended absences for non-disability reasons is textbook discrimination. The comparison matters. If your employer routinely grants leave for elective surgery or personal travel but suddenly finds your ADA leave to be an undue hardship, that inconsistency is evidence. The same logic applies under the PWFA when an employer denies pregnancy-related accommodations it would grant for other temporary physical limitations.

Public Policy Violations

Beyond specific leave statutes, most states recognize a wrongful termination claim when an employee is fired for reasons that violate public policy. Common examples include firing someone for filing a workers’ compensation claim, refusing to break the law on the employer’s behalf, performing jury duty, or reporting illegal conduct as a whistleblower. Workers’ compensation retaliation is governed by state law rather than a single federal statute, but the vast majority of states prohibit it.

What Happens to Your Health Insurance

Losing coverage is often a more immediate worry than losing the job. During FMLA leave, your employer must maintain your group health insurance on the same terms as if you had never stopped working: same plan, same employer contribution, same coverage level. Any plan changes or new benefits added while you’re out apply to you too.³ You still owe your share of the premium, but the employer cannot charge you an administrative fee on top of it.¹²

If you are terminated during or after FMLA leave, COBRA continuation coverage becomes available. The qualifying event is the last day of FMLA leave (or the date you lose coverage, if later), and the maximum COBRA coverage period is measured from there. Even if coverage lapsed during the leave because you missed a premium payment, that lapse does not affect when the qualifying event occurs or your right to elect COBRA.¹³

Handbooks, Contracts, and State Paid Leave

Federal law sets the floor, not the ceiling. Many employers offer longer leave, paid leave, or broader eligibility than the FMLA or ADA requires, and those extras usually appear in employee handbooks or formal contracts. Handbook language that spells out specific leave procedures and job security promises can sometimes be enforced as an implied contract, though how courts treat handbook language varies by jurisdiction. A formal employment contract is more straightforward: if it guarantees your right to take leave and return, that provision overrides the default at-will relationship. Read anything in writing before assuming your leave is unprotected or accepting a termination as final.

A growing number of states and the District of Columbia have enacted their own paid family and medical leave programs. As of 2026, roughly 14 jurisdictions offer wage replacement benefits during qualifying leaves, with replacement rates generally ranging from 60 to 100 percent of wages and maximum weekly benefits varying widely by state. Several of these programs launched in 2026, so the landscape is expanding. State programs typically come with their own job-protection and anti-retaliation provisions, and they may cover employees who fall outside the FMLA’s eligibility rules. Check whether your state has a program, because the protections can be substantially more generous than federal law alone.

What to Do If You Are Fired While on Leave

Document everything first. Save written communications about your leave request, your employer’s responses, performance reviews, and the termination notice. Timing evidence is critical. A record showing you were fired days after requesting leave tells a different story than one showing a months-long performance issue.

Then pay attention to filing deadlines, because they are shorter than most people expect.

FMLA claims: You can file a complaint with the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division at any local office, by mail, or by phone. A private lawsuit generally must be filed within two years of the violation, or three years if the violation was willful.¹⁴
ADA and PWFA claims: You must file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC within 180 days of the termination. That extends to 300 days if your state or locality has its own anti-discrimination agency, which most do.¹⁵
USERRA claims: There is no statute of limitations, but filing promptly preserves evidence and strengthens your case. Complaints go to the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service.

Talking to an employment attorney before these deadlines pass is worth the effort even if you aren’t sure you have a case. Many offer free initial consultations, and successful FMLA plaintiffs can recover attorney’s fees, so cost is less of a barrier than people assume.¹⁴

1
Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute (LII). Employment-at-Will Doctrine
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28: The Family and Medical Leave Act
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.209 – Maintenance of Employee Benefits
4
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act
5
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the ADA
6
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Summary of Key Provisions of EEOCs Final Rule to Implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act
7
U.S. Department of Labor. USERRA Pocket Guide
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28E: Requesting Leave Under the Family and Medical Leave Act
9
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.313 – Failure to Provide Certification
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #77B: Protection for Individuals Under the FMLA
11
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Retaliation and Related Issues
12
eCFR. 29 CFR 825.210 – Employee Payment of Group Health Benefit Premiums
13
eCFR. 26 CFR 54.4980B-10 – Interaction of FMLA and COBRA
14
U.S. Department of Labor. Enforcement of the FMLA
15
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Time Limits for Filing a Charge