Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/377

 502us1$17Z 08-21-96 15:27:32 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 215 (1991)

219

Opinion of the Court

‘reasonableness’ of a reservist’s leave request.” Gulf States, supra, at 1468. Although St. Vincent’s recognizes the importance of the statute’s freedom from provisos, see Brief for Respondent 9, it still argues that the text of subsection (d) favors its position. The hospital stresses that “leave” as used in subsection (d) is to be enjoyed by an “employee,” whose status as such implies that the employment relationship continues during the absence. Accordingly, employees protected under subsection (d) are “returned” to their positions after military service is over, while reservists protected by other subsections of § 2024 are “restored” to theirs,8 the difference in language attesting that the former remain employees, while the latter cease to be such during their time away. The hospital argues that the very notion of such a continuing relationship is incompatible with absences as lengthy as King’s, and finds that conclusion supported by the provisions speaking to the actual mechanics for resuming employment. While the reservists subject to other subsections must reapply for employment, those protected by subsection (d) are allowed, and indeed required, to “report for work at the beginning of the next regularly scheduled working period” after the tour of military duty expires. The hospital posits the impracticality of expecting an employee to report for work immediately after a 3-year absence, “to take his apron off the peg,” as the hospital’s counsel put it, and go back to work as if nothing had happened. It also makes much of the difficulties of filling responsible positions that would follow if their incumbents could be turned out so abruptly after serving for so long, upon the prior incumbent’s equally abrupt return. 8 Subsections (a), (b), (c), and (g) identify other classes of reservists, enlistees, and those called to active duty, and make applicable to those classes the reemployment protection offered inductees pursuant to 38 U. S. C. § 2021(a)(2)(A)(i), namely, “restor[ation]” to the formerly held position “or to a position of like seniority, status, and pay.”