Summary: The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), under its Wage and Hour Division (WHD), recently released several opinion letters (WHD Letters) providing clarifying guidance with respect to certain aspects of leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), including those related to travel time for medical appointments, school closures for inclement weather, and intermittent FMLA leave calculations for shift workers with overtime hours.
Read on for more information and employer considerations.
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires covered employers to provide eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for an eligible employee’s own serious health condition or to care for the eligible employee's family member (i.e., spouse, child, or parent) with a serious health condition.
Eligible employees may also take up to 26 workweeks of leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered servicemember with a serious injury or illness, if the employee is the spouse, child, parent, or next of kin of the servicemember. FMLA leave is also available for eligible employees to take time off work for the birth, adoption, or foster care placement of a child and to bond with the child.
Employees have the right to take FMLA leave all at once, or, when medically necessary, in separate blocks of time (also known as intermittent leave) or by reducing the time they work each day or week.
Eligible Employees: Employees are eligible for FMLA leave if they:
Covered Employers: Covered employers under the FMLA include:
Serious Health Condition is defined under the FMLA as an illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves either inpatient care or continuing treatment by a health care provider. See the WHD Fact Sheet webpage here for more details regarding a "serious health condition" under the FMLA.
Background: This WHD Letter was released on January 5, 2026, in response to a request for clarification with respect to whether FMLA leave may be used for time spent traveling to or from medical appointments. The requesting organization stated that they have eligible employees planning to take intermittent or reduced-schedule FMLA leave to attend medical appointments related to their own (or their qualifying family member’s) serious health condition in various locations, which are “some distance” from their homes or workplaces.
Travel Time to/from Medical Appointments: This WHD Letter clarifies that when an eligible employee travels to or from a health care provider for a medical appointment related to the employee’s own serious health condition or that of a covered family member, they may take FMLA leave not only for the actual appointment, but also for the time traveling to or from the appointment.
Medical Certification: A covered employer may require that an employee submit a medical certification to support the employee’s need for FMLA leave due to the employee’s or the employee’s family member’s serious health condition. See the WHD Fact Sheet webpage here for more details regarding medical certifications under the FMLA.
For purposes of travel time under the FMLA, this WHD Letter states that “a healthcare provider’s knowledge does not extend to the travel time necessary for a patient to get to and return from a needed appointment.” As a result, a health care provider is not required to provide an estimate of an employee’s travel time to or from an appointment in the medical certification. In fact, the WHD Letter emphasizes that “a medical certification need not include any information regarding travel time to be complete and valid under the FMLA.”
Unrelated Activities: This WHD Letter also notes that while travel time to and from medical appointments is covered under the FMLA to obtain care for an employee’s (or their family member’s) own serious health condition, it does not include travel to or from, or even stops for, activities unrelated to the medical appointment.
The following medical appointment travel time examples are provided in this WHD Letter for clarity:
Background: This WHD Letter was also released on January 5, 2026, in response to a request for clarification with respect to how a school closure of less than a full week impacts the amount of leave a school employee uses under the FMLA, specifically when a school closes for less than a full week due to inclement weather.
This WHD Letter clarifies that when a school closes for part of a week during which an employee uses less than a full week of FMLA leave, the period during which the school is closed is not counted as FMLA leave and such time during the school closure should not be deducted from the employee’s FMLA leave entitlement, unless the employee was scheduled and expected to work during the period and uses FMLA leave for that time.
However, when a school closes for part of the week during which an employee is using a full week of FMLA leave, the entire week is counted as FMLA leave and the employer may deduct a full week’s worth of leave from the employee’s FMLA leave entitlement.
The guidance within this WHD Letter aligns with DOL guidance from 2023, clarifying how FMLA leave interacts with holidays. See the Risk Strategies article here for more details.[2]
The following school closure examples are provided in this WHD Letter for clarity:
This WHD Letter also confirms that the following do not affect the amount of FMLA leave an employee uses:
Background: In another WHD Letter released in September 2025, the DOL clarified how to calculate intermittent or reduced-schedule leave under the FMLA, particularly for correctional law enforcement employees working fixed 12-hour shifts plus mandatory and voluntary overtime hours.
When an employee takes intermittent or reduced-schedule FMLA leave, the FMLA regulations permit employers to convert the employee’s workweeks into hours to calculate the employee’s FMLA leave entitlement and the amount of leave taken.[4] For employees who work a standard 40-hour per week schedule, this results in a 480-hour FMLA entitlement per benefit year.
This WHD Letter confirms that:
The following intermittent leave for shift worker calculation example is provided in this WHD Letter for clarity:
Mark is a correctional police officer who works a schedule that requires him to work 84 hours every two weeks, and is required to work what his employer classifies as mandatory overtime hours as part of this schedule. Additionally, Mark may volunteer for extra work above his scheduled hours. Mark’s employer considers his 12-workweek FMLA leave entitlement equivalent to 504 hours. The conversion is based on his actual schedule and does not include the availability of additional voluntary hours.
Mark has 504 hours of FMLA leave available when he requests 2.5 hours of leave to attend an appointment for an FMLA-qualifying serious health condition. Mark requests leave from 9:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. on a day on which he is scheduled to work during that time period. Mark’s employer approves Mark for 2.5 hours of FMLA leave and calculates that he has 501.5 hours of FMLA leave remaining available in the employer’s 12-month leave year.
The fact that Mark had the option to, but did not and was not required to, volunteer for additional hours in the workweek is not a factor in the calculation of how much FMLA leave he has available to use or how much FMLA leave he has used.
While these WHD Letters outlined above are generally limited to the specific facts presented, they do provide insightful and instructive guidance for employers navigating FMLA leave requests with similar fact patterns.
Employers are advised to confer with their leave consultants and employment/labor counsel to review and update, as necessary, their FMLA leave policies and practices in the wake of these recent WHD Letters.
Additionally, employers who outsource FMLA administration to a third-party vendor are advised to confirm their vendor is complying with the guidance detailed in these recent WHD Letters, as outlined above.
As a reminder, see below for other Risk Strategies articles detailing recent DOL guidance in connection with FMLA leave:
Finally, click here for a Risk Strategies article providing compliance guidance for employers regarding group health benefits continuation during FMLA leave.
Risk Strategies is here to help. Contact your Risk Strategies account team with any questions, or contact us directly here.
[1] Employees are employed each working day of the calendar week if they work any part of the week. The workweeks do not have to be consecutive.
[2] See 29 C.F.R. § 825.200(h).
[3] To satisfy the school’s instructional hour mandates imposed by the state. An employee’s ability to take FMLA leave on a “make up” day must be evaluated independently of the day that “make up” day replaces.
[4] See 29 CFR 825.205(b)(1).