Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 110 Part 6.djvu/521

 CONCURRENT RESOLUTIONS—APR. 16, 1996 110 STAT. 4343 as made applicable by the CAA, to maintain health benefits (subject to requirements of COBRA or 5 U.S.C. 8905a, whichever is applicable) and to restore the employee cease. However, these obligations continue if an employee indicates he or she may be unable to return to work but expresses a continuing desire to do so. (c) It may be necessary for an employee to take more leave than originally anticipated. Conversely, an employee may discover after beginning leave that the circumstances have changed and the amount of leave originally anticipated is no longer necessary. An employee may not be required to take more FMLA leave than necessary to resolve the circumstance that precipitated the need for leave. In both of these situations, the employing office may require that the employee provide the employing office reasonable notice (i.e., within two business days) of the changed circumstances where foreseeable. The employing office may also obtain information on such changed circumstances through requested status reports. §825.310 Under what circumstances may an employing office require that an employee submit a medical certification that the employee is able (or unable) to return to work (i.e., a **fitness-for-duty" report)? (a) As a condition of restoring an employee whose FMLA leave was occasioned by the employee's own serious health condition that made the employee unable to perform the employee's job, an employing office may have a uniformly-applied policy or practice that requires all similarly-situated employees (i.e., same occupation, same serious health condition) who take leave for such conditions to obtain and present certification from the employee's health care provider that the employee is able to resume work. (b) If the terms of a collective bargaining agreement govern an employee's return to work, those provisions shall be applied. Similarly, requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as made applicable by the CAA, that any retum-to-work physical be job-related and consistent with business necessity apply. For example, an attorney could not be required to submit to a medical examination or inquiry just because her leg had been amputated. The essential functions of an attome3r's job do not require use of both legs; therefore such an inquiry would not be job related. An employing office may require a warehouse laborer, whose back impairment affects the ability to lift, to be examined by an orthopedist, but may not require this employee to submit to an HIV test where the test is not related to either the essential functions of his/her job or to his/her impairment. (c) An employing office may seek fitness-for-duty certification only with regard to the particular health condition that caused the employee's need for FMLA leave. The certification itself need only be a simple statement of an employee's ability to return to work. A health care provider employed by the employing office may contact the employee's health care provider with the employee's permission, for purposes of clarification of the employee's fitness to return to work. No additional information may be acquired, and clarification may be requested only for the serious health condition for which FMLA leave was taken. The employing office may not delay the employee's return to work while contact with the health care provider is being made.

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