The Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for qualifying medical and family reasons. That guarantee is supposed to mean something. You take your leave, you handle your health crisis or your family obligation, and you come back to your job. But for a troubling number of Maryland employees, the request for FMLA leave is the beginning of the end of their employment. The leave gets approved. The termination follows. And the employer’s explanation never quite accounts for why an employee with a clean record suddenly became dispensable the moment they needed time off. Wrongful termination lawyers in Maryland handle FMLA-based claims with particular attention because these cases sit at the intersection of two distinct legal theories, each with its own elements, its own evidence requirements, and its own strategic considerations.
The distinction between those two theories determines how the case is built and what the employee has to prove.
FMLA Interference vs. FMLA Retaliation
Most people who’ve been fired after taking or requesting FMLA leave assume they have one type of claim. They actually may have two, and the difference between them matters.
Interference
An FMLA interference claim arises when the employer prevents the employee from exercising their FMLA rights. The employer denies a valid leave request. They pressure the employee to work during approved leave. They fail to restore the employee to their same or equivalent position when the leave ends. They terminate the employee to avoid having to grant the leave at all.
The critical feature of an interference claim is that the employee doesn’t have to prove the employer acted with retaliatory intent. The question isn’t why the employer did it. The question is whether the employer’s actions deprived the employee of an FMLA entitlement. If a worker requested leave that they were eligible for and the employer denied or obstructed it, that’s interference regardless of what was going through the decision-maker’s mind.
This distinction has practical consequences. An interference claim can succeed even when the employer had no animosity toward the employee, as long as the employee was denied something the FMLA entitled them to. An employer who genuinely didn’t understand the law and incorrectly denied a leave request has still committed interference.
Retaliation
An FMLA retaliation claim is different. It arises when the employer takes an adverse action against the employee because the employee exercised their FMLA rights. The employee requested leave or took leave, and the employer punished them for it through termination, demotion, reduced hours, a negative performance review, or some other materially adverse change in the terms of employment.
Retaliation requires proof of a causal connection between the protected activity (requesting or taking FMLA leave) and the adverse employment action. The employee has to show that the leave was a motivating factor in the employer’s decision. This is where the case starts to resemble other wrongful termination claims based on discrimination or retaliation: circumstantial evidence, timeline analysis, and the credibility of the employer’s stated reason all come into play.
Many FMLA termination cases involve both theories. The employer interfered with the employee’s leave rights and retaliated against them for attempting to exercise those rights. Pleading both claims gives the employee two paths to recovery and forces the employer to defend on multiple fronts.
Who Is Eligible for FMLA Protection
Not every employee in Maryland qualifies for FMLA coverage, and employers frequently raise eligibility as a threshold defense.
To be eligible, the employee must have worked for the employer for at least 12 months (not necessarily consecutive) and must have logged at least 1,250 hours during the 12-month period immediately before the leave. The employer must also have at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius of the employee’s worksite.
That 50-employee threshold excludes a meaningful number of Maryland workers, particularly those employed by smaller businesses. Maryland’s own Healthy Working Families Act provides some additional leave protections, but it doesn’t replicate the full scope of FMLA coverage. Employees who fall outside FMLA eligibility may still have claims under state anti-discrimination statutes if the leave was related to a disability or pregnancy, but the FMLA-specific protections won’t apply.
Employers sometimes miscalculate eligibility, either by undercounting hours, misapplying the 12-month employment requirement, or incorrectly determining the number of employees at the worksite. An employee told they don’t qualify for FMLA should have the eligibility determination reviewed by an attorney rather than accepting it at face value.
How Maryland Employers Disguise FMLA Retaliation
The playbook looks similar to other pretextual terminations, but FMLA cases have their own recurring patterns.
The position elimination. The employee takes a six-week leave for surgery. When they’re ready to return, they’re told their position has been “eliminated due to restructuring.” Nobody else lost their job in the restructuring. Or the position was filled by someone else while they were out, and the employer simply kept the replacement.
The FMLA requires that the employee be restored to the same position or an equivalent one with the same pay, benefits, and terms of employment. An employer who permanently fills the position during the leave and then claims there’s no role to return to has likely committed both interference (failing to restore) and retaliation (terminating because the leave created an opportunity to replace the employee).
The performance narrative that appears during or after leave. An employee with no prior performance issues returns from FMLA leave to find a Performance Improvement Plan waiting on their desk, or discovers that their most recent review has been retroactively downgraded. The employer is building the paper trail to justify a termination it’s already decided to carry out.
The attendance-based termination. Some employers count FMLA-protected absences against the employee under their attendance policy and then fire the employee for excessive absences. This is a textbook FMLA violation. Protected leave cannot be counted as a negative factor in any employment decision. An employer who uses FMLA leave in calculating attendance points, triggering progressive discipline, or justifying termination has violated the statute on its face.
The “we needed someone reliable” rationale. The employer doesn’t dispute that the employee took legitimate FMLA leave. Instead, they argue that the business needed someone who could be present consistently, and the employee’s extended absence demonstrated that they couldn’t meet the position’s demands. This is retaliation dressed up as a business necessity argument, and courts in the Fourth Circuit (which covers Maryland) have rejected it repeatedly. The entire purpose of the FMLA is to allow employees to take extended leave without losing their jobs. Penalizing them for exercising that right undermines the statute’s core function.
The Evidence That Strengthens FMLA Claims
What Wrongful Termination Lawyers in Maryland Build These Cases Around
Temporal proximity carries significant weight in FMLA retaliation cases. A termination that occurs within days or weeks of the employee’s return from leave, or within days of the initial leave request, creates a strong inference that the leave motivated the adverse action. The Fourth Circuit has recognized that close temporal proximity alone can be sufficient to establish a prima facie case of retaliation, though the employee typically needs additional circumstantial evidence to survive summary judgment and reach a jury.
That additional evidence often includes the contrast between the employee’s performance record before the leave and the employer’s characterization of their performance after. Positive reviews followed by sudden criticism is a pattern that juries find difficult to ignore. Similarly, if other employees who didn’t take FMLA leave were treated more favorably under similar circumstances, that disparate treatment strengthens the retaliation argument.
The employer’s compliance with FMLA procedural requirements also tells a story. Did the employer provide the required notices when the employee requested leave? Did they designate the leave as FMLA-qualifying in a timely manner? Did they inform the employee of their rights and obligations? Failures in the notification process can support both interference and retaliation claims and suggest an employer that was either unfamiliar with its FMLA obligations or intentionally ignoring them.
Internal communications between managers and HR during the leave period are frequently the most revealing evidence. Emails expressing frustration about the employee’s absence, discussions about replacing the employee permanently, or conversations about how the leave is “disrupting the team” all point to a retaliatory motive, and they surface regularly during discovery.
The Filing Deadlines You Need to Know
FMLA claims are subject to a two-year statute of limitations for non-willful violations and a three-year statute for willful violations. A willful violation means the employer knew or showed reckless disregard for whether its conduct violated the FMLA. The clock starts running on the date of the adverse employment action, not the date of the leave request.
If the FMLA claim overlaps with a discrimination claim under Title VII, the ADA, or the Maryland Fair Employment Practices Act, separate administrative deadlines may also apply. An EEOC charge must typically be filed within 300 days in Maryland, and that deadline runs concurrently with the FMLA statute of limitations. Missing the administrative deadline doesn’t affect the FMLA claim, but it can eliminate the overlapping discrimination claim.
Your Leave Was Protected. Your Job Should Have Been Too.
The FMLA exists because Congress recognized that employees shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their paycheck, or between caring for a seriously ill family member and keeping a job. When an employer fires you for exercising that right, the law provides remedies that include lost wages, lost benefits, liquidated damages (which effectively doubles the economic recovery in cases of willful violations), and attorneys’ fees.
If you were terminated after requesting or taking FMLA leave in Maryland, wrongful termination lawyers in Maryland can assess whether you have an interference claim, a retaliation claim, or both, and take the steps necessary to preserve your evidence and meet the applicable deadlines. The Mundaca Law Firm offers consultations for employees who believe their FMLA rights have been violated. If the timing between your leave and your termination doesn’t add up, trust that instinct and get a legal opinion before the window to act closes.
