DC FMLA: Coverage, 16-Week Leave Banks, and Job Protection

The DC Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible workers up to 16 weeks of unpaid family leave and a separate 16 weeks of unpaid medical leave during any 24-month period, with job protection and continued health insurance. That potential 32 weeks of protected time off is significantly more than the 12 weeks available under the federal FMLA, and the law reaches every employer with 20 or more workers in the District.

Who Is Covered

The DCFMLA applies to any employer with 20 or more employees working in the District of Columbia.¹ If your employer has fewer than 20 workers in DC, this law does not cover you, though the federal FMLA may still apply if the company employs 50 or more people nationwide.

To be an eligible employee, you need two things. First, at least 12 months of employment with the same employer. Those 12 months do not have to be consecutive; any months you worked within the seven years before your leave starts count toward the requirement.² Second, you must have worked at least 1,000 hours for that employer during the 12 months leading up to your leave.³ That averages about 19 hours a week, so most full-time and many regular part-time workers qualify.

Who Counts as a Family Member

DC’s definition of family reaches further than the federal FMLA, which limits covered relationships to spouses, parents, and children. Under the DCFMLA, a family member includes:

Blood relatives, in-laws, and people connected to you through a legal custody relationship, which covers parents, siblings, grandparents, and others linked by blood, marriage, or court order
Foster children
A child living in your household for whom you have permanently taken on parental responsibility, even without a formal adoption
A domestic partner: someone with whom you share or have shared a home within the past year and maintain a committed relationship²

The domestic partner provision is where many workers discover they have more protection than they realized. If your live-in partner develops a serious health condition, you can take family leave to provide care without a marriage certificate.

Family Leave: 16 Weeks in 24 Months

You can take up to 16 workweeks of family leave during any 24-month period for the birth of your child, placement of a child through adoption or foster care, permanently taking on parental responsibility for a child, or caring for a family member with a serious health condition.⁴ The 24-month clock begins on the first day you use family leave.

Watch one deadline: your right to bonding leave after the birth or placement of a child expires 12 months after the event.⁴ Wait 14 months after an adoption to request bonding time, and the window is gone.

Family leave is unpaid by default. If you have accrued paid time off (vacation, personal days, sick leave), you can use that paid leave during your absence, and it counts against your 16-week total.⁴

If two family members work for the same employer, the company can cap their combined family leave at 16 weeks total and limit their simultaneous absence to just 4 weeks during the same 24-month period.⁴ That matters for couples and siblings at the same workplace.

Medical Leave: A Separate 16-Week Bank

Independent of your family leave, you can take up to 16 workweeks of medical leave during any 24-month period when a serious health condition prevents you from doing your job.⁵ The law defines a serious health condition as a physical or mental illness, injury, or impairment that involves either inpatient care in a hospital, hospice, or residential facility, or continuing treatment or supervision at home by a healthcare provider.²

Because family leave and medical leave are two separate entitlements, an eligible worker could access up to 32 workweeks of protected leave in one 24-month period. Someone who spends 16 weeks caring for a parent and later develops their own serious health condition still has the full 16 weeks of medical leave available.

Intermittent and Reduced-Schedule Leave

You don’t have to take all 16 weeks in one block. Both family leave for a sick relative and medical leave for your own condition can be taken intermittently when medically necessary.⁴⁵ That covers arrangements like a few days per week for chemotherapy or dialysis.

Dropping to part-time hours for a stretch (a reduced-schedule arrangement) requires your employer’s agreement. If you both agree, the 16 weeks of family leave can be spread across up to 24 consecutive workweeks.⁴ Intermittent bonding leave after the birth or placement of a healthy child also requires your employer’s agreement.

How to Request Leave

When you know in advance that you’ll need leave, you owe your employer reasonable prior notice. For an expected birth or planned adoption, give enough lead time for the company to prepare. For planned medical treatment, you also owe a reasonable effort to schedule it in a way that doesn’t unnecessarily disrupt operations, subject to your doctor’s approval.⁴ For unforeseeable needs, such as a sudden hospitalization, notify your employer as soon as possible and use whatever call-in procedure your workplace normally follows.

Your employer can require a medical certification from your healthcare provider when you request leave to care for a sick family member or for your own serious health condition. Certification is not required for bonding leave after a birth, adoption, or foster placement. The certification must state when the condition began, how long it’s expected to last, the relevant medical facts, and either a statement that you cannot perform your job duties (for your own leave) or an estimate of the care time needed (for family leave).⁶

Your employer must keep the medical information confidential. Willfully violating that confidentiality carries a $1,000 penalty per offense.⁶ Keep copies of everything you submit: the certification, your written leave request, and any proof of delivery. If a dispute arises later, that paper trail is your best protection.

Health Insurance and Getting Your Job Back

Your employer must maintain your group health insurance for the entire duration of your DCFMLA leave, at the same level and under the same terms as before. You still owe your share of the premium, and if you stop paying it, the employer can drop your coverage until you return and resume paying in.⁷

When your leave ends, your employer must restore you to the same position you held before, or to an equivalent position with the same pay, benefits, seniority, and other terms.⁷ Equivalent is not vague here. If your old role paid $75,000 with three weeks of vacation, the replacement must match those terms.

One narrow exception applies to high earners. If you are among the five highest-paid employees at a company with fewer than 50 workers, or among the top 10 percent of earners at a company with 50 or more, your employer can deny reinstatement only if it can show that restoring you would cause substantial economic injury to its operations and only if it notified you of that possibility when you requested leave.⁷ Skip the notification, and the exception disappears.

How the DCFMLA Stacks with Federal FMLA

Many DC workers qualify under both laws at once. When a leave event qualifies under both, the time counts against both entitlements simultaneously, and your employer can designate leave under both regardless of which one you named in your request.³

The measurement periods differ. Federal FMLA gives 12 weeks in a 12-month window; DCFMLA gives 16 weeks in a 24-month window. In some situations you may exhaust one entitlement while retaining time under the other, so the two laws working together can cover more than either alone.³

DC Paid Family Leave Is a Separate Program

The DCFMLA provides job protection but not a paycheck. DC Paid Family Leave is a separate program that provides monetary benefits (up to $1,190 per week, up to 12 weeks for most purposes and 2 weeks for prenatal care) funded by employer contributions.⁸

Do not assume one covers the other. DC Paid Family Leave gives you money; it does not, by itself, protect your job. Job protection comes from the DCFMLA. If your employer has fewer than 20 employees, you can collect paid leave benefits, but your employer has no DCFMLA obligation to hold your position.⁹ Workers at smaller employers should know that before assuming they can return to their old role.

Retaliation and Filing a Complaint

Your employer cannot interfere with your right to take DCFMLA leave, and it cannot fire, demote, reassign to undesirable shifts, cut pay, or otherwise discriminate against you for requesting leave, using it, filing a complaint, or participating in any related proceeding.³ The same anti-retaliation protection applies if you take DC Paid Family Leave benefits.⁹

If you believe your employer violated the DCFMLA, you have two options: file an administrative complaint with the DC Office of Human Rights or go directly to DC Superior Court. Either way, you must act within one year of the violation or your discovery of it.¹⁰¹¹

The remedies are substantial. If the Office of Human Rights finds a violation, it can order your employer to pay all lost wages, salary, and benefits plus interest. On top of that, the employer may owe additional damages up to three times the lost compensation, plus any medical expenses your health insurance would have covered had the violation not occurred. The prevailing party can also recover attorney’s fees and costs.¹⁰

1
D.C. Law Library. District of Columbia Code 32-516 – Applicability
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D.C. Law Library. District of Columbia Code 32-501 – Definitions
3
DC Office of Human Rights. Frequently Asked Questions About the D.C. Family and Medical Leave Act
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D.C. Law Library. District of Columbia Code 32-502 – Family Leave Requirement
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D.C. Law Library. District of Columbia Code 32-503 – Medical Leave Requirement
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DC Office of Human Rights. District of Columbia Code 32-504 – Certification
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D.C. Law Library. District of Columbia Code 32-505 – Employment and Benefits Protection
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DC Paid Family Leave. Benefits Calculator
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Department of Employment Services. DC Paid Family Leave vs. DC FMLA Comparison Chart
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D.C. Law Library. District of Columbia Code 32-509 – Administrative Enforcement Procedure; Relief
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DC Office of Human Rights. DC Family and Medical Leave Act – Workplace Poster