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Cendant Corp. v. Commissioner of Labor10/25/2005
of chapter 29 of the United States Code provides that " t shall be unlawful for any employer to interfere with, restrain, or deny the exercise of or the attempt to exercise, any right provided under this subchapter." An employee may also claim that her employer discriminated against her or unlawfully discharged her in retaliation for exercising her rights under FMLA. 29 U.S.C. § 2615 (a) (2). The leave statute provides for the same two causes of action. General Statutes § 31-51pp (a) (1) and (2). When asserting a FMLA violation, an employee may pursue one or both of these causes of action.
In the present case, Persky claimed in her complaint that the plaintiff had interfered with her right to be reinstated to her original position following her leave. Accordingly, in this opinion, we address only the cause of action for interference and we examine the proper framework for analyzing a claim alleging interference with an employee's right to reinstatement. With this background in mind, we turn to the plaintiff's claims.
II.
The plaintiff's primary claim on appeal is that the trial court improperly affirmed the framework used by the commissioner in analyzing Persky's interference claim. Specifically, the plaintiff claims that the trial court improperly affirmed the commissioner's analysis because: (1) the commissioner improperly determined that the plaintiff was strictly liable for interfering with Persky's right to reinstatement; and (2) the commissioner improperly allocated the burden of proof in analyzing Persky's interference claim.
With respect to the strict liability standard, the plaintiff claims that holding an employer strictly liable for failing to reinstate an employee is inconsistent with the provisions in the leave statute that provide that the right to reinstatement is not absolute. The plaintiff further claims, with respect to the allocation of the burden of proof, that interference claims under the leave statute are akin to discrimination claims, and that, therefore, the burden-shifting framework set forth in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 802, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed. 2d 668 (1973), which places the ultimate burden of proof on the employee, is applicable to the claim in the present case.
The defendants counter that the trial court correctly affirmed the commissioner's determination that, once an employee has shown a right to reinstatement under the leave statute, an employer is strictly liable for interfering with an employee's exercise of her rights under that statute. The defendants further claim that relevant case law and regulations implementing the leave statute support the burden-shifting framework used by the commissioner and affirmed by the trial court, and that the McDonnell Douglas Corp. burden-shifting framework is inapplicable to interference claims. We agree with the defendants. Although the plaintiff briefed separately its two arguments concerning the proper analytical framework for interference claims, we note that both claims address related aspects of that framework, and we therefore examine them together.
We begin by noting that the parties disagree as to the appropriate standard of review with regard to the plaintiff's claims. The plaintiff contends that its claims concern the interpretation of previously unreviewed provisions of the leave statute and that we therefore should exercise de novo review. Specifically, the plaintiff claims that de novo review of its claims is warranted because the applicable burdens of proof in interference claims under the leave statute have not been reviewed by this court, and the available cases addressing the issue evince an inconclusive split of authority as to
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