On March 18, President Trump signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The Act requires employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide paid emergency sick leave and paid family and medical leave to its employees. Public agencies, including cities, townships, road commissions, community mental health authorities, and school districts, are covered employers under the Act regardless of their number of employees. The Act also has exemptions for certain employee groups.
Over the past two weeks, employers have been scratching their heads over how to implement this law, which went into effect Wednesday, April 1st. Informal Q&As have trickled in from the Department of Labor, but as of Wednesday, April 1st, the Department had not yet issued final binding regulations implementing the Act.
In a sweeping 124-pages of regulations, the Department issued its most comprehensive guidelines yet. There is a great deal to sift through, but one issue should be of particular interest to many employers.
The Act provides that an employee is able to use paid sick time to the extent the employee is unable to work because the employee is subject to a state “quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19.” Section 5102(a)(1). Governor Whitmer’s Stay Home, Stay Safe Executive Order (2020-21) likely qualifies as a “quarantine or isolation order” under the Act.
Nevertheless, under the new regulations, if Executive Order 2020-21 forced an employer to close its business, then the employees of that business would be ineligible for emergency paid sick leave under the Act. The Department of Labor provided an example in the regulations: “. . . if the [isolation] order forced the coffee shop to close, the reason for the cashier being unable to work would be because the coffee shop was subject to the order, not because the cashier himself was subject to the order.” See §826.20(a)(2).
Readers should be aware that this field of law is ever-changing. The above analysis is based on a cursory reading of the regulations. Please stay tuned for new and changing developments.
The regulations can be found here:
https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/Pandemic/FFCRA.pdf
