Opinion ID: 775824
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The FMLA Remedy and the Historical Record

Text: The FMLA preamble declares: 74 It is the purpose of this Act - 75 . . . . . 76 (4) to[,] . . . consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, minimize[ ] the potential for employment discrimination on the basis of sex by ensuring that leave is available for eligible medical reasons (including maternity-related disability) and for compelling family reasons, on a gender-neutral basis; and 77 (5) to promote the goal of equal employment opportunity for women and men, pursuant to [the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment]. 78 § 2601(b). 79 Section 2612(a)(1)(C) of the FMLA, providing for unpaid leave to care for an immediate family member of the employee, serves Congress' general goal of equal employment opportunity for women and men in several ways: 80 First, emergencies do arise that require the care of a family member. By providing for a period of job-protected unpaid leave, the FMLA allows women to participate in the public sphere despite the occasional and temporary, but pressing, needs of family members -and despite the inherited assumption of many employers, derived in part from a history of state-sponsored stereotypical gender roles, that workers have another (female) family member to handle emergencies at home. 81 Second, by allowing both male and female employees reasonable emergency family leave, the FMLA permits families to choose which parent or sibling will attend to extraordinary family responsibilities in light of the family's preferences, needs, career concerns, and economic considerations.  H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 36 (1993). Under federal policy, then, domestic duties no longer belong to women only, but can be assumed by any adult family member. By allowing either women or men to take responsibility for pressing domestic concerns, according to the family's preferences, the FMLA provides women the opportunity to participate fully in the marketplace. This flexibility offers women (and men) the opportunity to overcome the stereotypical gender roles fostered and perpetuated by the states. 82 Third, as already discussed, by providing for family-care leave on a gender neutral basis, Congress also counteracted any tendency by employers either to refuse to hire women because of their presumed higher need for family-care leave, or to afford such leave to women but not to men, thus reinforcing gender roles. Laro, 259 F.3d at 12; 29 see H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 29 (1993) (A law providing special protection to women . . . in addition to being inequitable, runs the risk of causing discriminatory treatment. [This legislation], by addressing the needs of all workers, avoids such a risk.) 83 Additionally, the heightened scrutiny of gender-based classifications would almost surely have precluded leaveprotection that was not gender neutral. Cf. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. at 643, 645; Virginia, 518 U.S. at 533. It is for this reason, presumably, that Congress in the preamble to the FMLA specified the need to accomplish the purposes of the Act in a manner . . . consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. §§ 2601(b)(4). 84