Employers with 75 or more employees are subject to both the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Connecticut Family and Medical Leave Act.  The two laws are similar in many respects; the most significant difference for most types of FMLA leave is that the federal FMLA leave entitlement is 12 weeks in a 12-month period, and the state FMLA entitlement is 16 weeks in a 24-month period. (There are longer periods for certain leaves involving military service).  The federal and state leave entitlements can run concurrently, and presumably all employers will have them do so, since running consecutively would allow up to 28 weeks of leave in a single year.

But having the state and federal leave entitlements run concurrently requires the corresponding 12 and 24-month periods to be measured in the same way.

Federal FMLA gives employers a choice of several methods for determining the federal 12-month period:

• A calendar year;
• Any fixed 12-month period, such as a fiscal year;
• A 12-month period measured forward from the date the employee first uses leave;
• A “rolling” 12-month period measured backward from the date the employee first uses leave.

From our experience, most employers chose the “looking forward” method, although some choose the “looking backward” option.  We recently encountered one company whose policy statement described its leave measurement period as a rolling 24-month period measured backward from the date the employee uses leave.

However, in contrast to the federal FMLA, the state law does not provide a choice of methods for measuring the 24-month period of leave allotment.  Connecticut Department of Labor Regulation 31-51qq-11(b) specifies that the 24-month period shall begin with the first day of leave taken – which is the federal FMLA third option.

So for  employers with 75 or more employees to have federal and state FMLA leaves run concurrently, the measurement must look forward from the first day that leave is taken.  For example, if leave begins on July 1, 2016, the employee may take a total of 12 weeks of leave in the 12-month period that ends on June 30, 2017 as the federal FMLA allotment, and a total of 16 weeks in the 24-month period that ends on June 30, 2018 as the state allotment.  Any part of the state leave that occurs in the first 12 months, up to 12 weeks, runs concurrently with the federal leave.  Any part of the state leave that is taken in the second 12 months runs concurrently with the new federal leave allotment that becomes available as of July 1, 2017.