Member Article

On April 1, 2020—the effective date of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA)—the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued temporary regulations to interpret and enforce the landmark legislation passed by Congress “to assist working families facing public health emergencies” arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Regulations,which expire with the FFCRA on December 31, 2020, answer many of the questions companies have raised after reviewing the statutory language of the FFCRA and the DOL’s previous guidance in the form of 59 Questions and Answers (Q&As) issued in late March.

The FFCRA contains two components: (1) the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act (EPSLA), which entitles certain employees to take up to two weeks of paid sick leave; and (2) the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (EFMLEA), which permits certain employees to take up to twelve weeks of expanded family and medical leave, ten of which are (partially) paid, for specified reasons related to COVID-19. The statutory language of the FFCRA sets out generally the employers who are subject to the statute, the employees who are eligible for leave under either the EPSLA, the EFMLEA or both, the reasons qualifying an employee for leave, the calculation of paid leave, and the consequences to a company for not providing protected FFCRA leave. The statutory language also sets out in broad strokes exemptions from the FFCRA for small businesses and for employers of healthcare providers and emergency responders.

Since March 24, the DOL has issued interpretive guidance primarily in the form of Q&As on each of these topics. It has also published and updated a Notice Poster for covered employers to post to satisfy the FFCRA mandate (the most recent version is available here). As part of the guidance, the DOL addressed several threshold issues surrounding applicability, eligibility and administrative processes, including those that involve joint and integrated employers, exempt entities, employee classifications, intermittent use of leave, documentation to support leave benefits and reimbursements, and the interplay between existing leave entitlements and new leave entitlements. Our summary of the DOL’s Q&As is available here.

The Regulations provide both further guidance and the force of federal regulation. The Regulations span over 40 pages, and clock in at over 120 pages with their explanatory preamble, so there is plenty to digest. A bullet point summary of these Regulations is available here. Some of the Regulations confirm what companies already understood from reviewing the statute or the DOL’s Q&As. This bulletin—written in Question and Answer format—highlights what we believe to be the most important takeaways from the Regulations that we did not know before from the DOL’s prior guidance.

Click here to read more.