FMLA Retaliation Lawyer for Wayne County
You took medical leave you were entitled to take, and Wayne County’s largest employers run on attendance systems that do not forgive absence. Then the points piled up, the write-ups started, or the job was gone when you got back.
If your employer had 50 or more employees within 75 miles, you had worked there a year and 1,250 hours, and the discipline tracks the leave, you may have an FMLA retaliation case. Most firings in Michigan are legal. This kind is not.
The case evaluation is a free 15-minute call, and termination cases are handled on contingency. The deadline that matters is two years from the retaliatory act, three if the violation was willful, with no EEOC charge first. The statewide FMLA retaliation page covers the statute; this page is about how these cases play out in Wayne County.
How FMLA retaliation cases look in Wayne County
Each of Wayne County’s big employer types produces its own version of the same problem.
Attendance points at the Rouge, Jefferson North, and Factory ZERO
Ford’s Dearborn operations, the Stellantis Detroit Assembly Complex on the east side, and GM’s Factory ZERO in Detroit-Hamtramck all run on shift schedules and progressive attendance discipline. Intermittent FMLA leave for a chronic condition collides with those systems constantly. The leave is approved, but the absence still gets coded as an occurrence, and the worker is walked out at the point threshold. The evidence is your attendance printout, the FMLA designation notice, and the dates side by side.
Nurses and techs at Henry Ford Health and the Detroit Medical Center
Hospital units are staffed thin, and a nurse or respiratory tech who certifies intermittent leave becomes a scheduling problem the moment the paperwork lands. Then the first negative evaluation in years arrives within weeks of the certification, followed by a “final warning” for a charting error that colleagues make without consequence, then termination on return from a block of leave. The evidence is the run of reviews before the certification, the scheduling records, and the discipline given to coworkers for the same conduct.
Ramp, fueling, and cabin-service work at DTW in Romulus
Ground-handling and airport-services contractors at Detroit Metro employ thousands of people in physical jobs where injuries are routine. When an injured worker requests leave, the response is too often a “job abandonment” letter issued while the certification is pending, or a silent removal from the schedule. There is also a threshold question specific to the airport: which of several stacked contractors actually employed you, and did that entity have 50 employees within 75 miles. The evidence is your paystubs, the W-2 entity name, your call-in log, and the letters themselves.
City of Detroit, Wayne County, and Wayne State employees caring for a parent
Public payrolls make up a large share of Wayne County employment, and the FMLA covers public agencies regardless of headcount. Many calls I get from municipal and university workers involve leave to care for an aging parent or a seriously ill spouse. Family-care leave is protected the same way, and a supervisor who calls it “not a real medical leave” has just handed you a useful email. The evidence is the leave request, the family member’s certification, and every message about it.
The law that applies
The FMLA is federal, and Michigan has no state statute that mirrors its 12 weeks of job-protected leave. That shapes the case in three ways.
First, the claim is federal, and the employer can move a state-court case to the Eastern District of Michigan. Second, there is no agency step. You do not file with the EEOC or the Michigan Department of Civil Rights; you go to court within two years of the adverse act, or three if you can show the violation was willful. Plan on two. Third, when the leave was for your own condition, the same facts usually support a disability claim under the ADA and Michigan’s Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act, and when it followed a birth, a pregnancy claim under ELCRA and Title VII. Those state claims let me keep part of the case in state court.
One honest caution. The employer’s headcount and your 1,250 hours are real thresholds, and the hours are hours actually worked, so a long layoff can cost you eligibility.
| Claim | Who’s covered | Deadline | Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| FMLA interference or retaliation (federal) | 50+ employees within 75 miles, or any public agency; employee with 12 months and 1,250 hours | 2 years, 3 if willful; no agency filing | Lost wages, an equal amount as liquidated damages unless good faith is proven, reinstatement or front pay, attorney fees; no emotional distress |
| PWDCRA (Michigan), leave for your own disability | 1+ employees | 3 years; written accommodation request within 182 days | Economic loss and uncapped emotional distress; attorney fees |
| ADA (federal), same facts | 15+ employees | EEOC charge within 300 days | Back pay plus compensatory and punitive damages capped at $50K–$300K |
| ELCRA (Michigan), leave following pregnancy | 1+ employees | 3 years; no agency filing | Economic loss and uncapped emotional distress; attorney fees |
The Michigan employment claim deadlines page lays all of these out in one place.
Where your Wayne County FMLA retaliation case gets filed
A stand-alone FMLA claim from Wayne County is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, at the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse, 231 W. Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit. You can file an FMLA claim in the Wayne County Circuit Court at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, 2 Woodward Avenue, but the employer will almost always remove it to federal court, so I usually start there.
The calculation changes when there is a Michigan claim in the mix. If your leave was for your own serious condition and the employer refused restrictions when you came back, the PWDCRA claim can be filed at 2 Woodward on its own, with the FMLA facts told to the jury as part of the story. The Wayne County employment lawyer page covers the jury pool and the venue decision in more detail.
Where you worked does not change the courthouse. A Dearborn Ford worker, a Livonia Trinity Health employee, and a Corewell Health nurse from Taylor or Wayne all land in one of the same two buildings downtown. It does change the evidence.
“FMLA abuse” investigations and the union contract at Wayne County plants
Two features of Wayne County plant work change how the case is built.
The first is the fraud accusation. Ford, Stellantis, GM, and the large suppliers increasingly respond to intermittent leave with an investigation: social media checks, a third-party investigator, a demand for recertification every few weeks. Federal courts in Michigan follow the honest-belief rule. If the employer reasonably investigated and genuinely believed you misused leave, it can win even if the belief was wrong. So the case becomes showing that the investigation was thin, that the recertification demands exceeded the regulations, or that workers without FMLA were never investigated for the same conduct.
The second is the UAW contract. Your local will grieve the discharge, and it should. But the arbitrator reads the contract, not the statute, and cannot award FMLA liquidated damages or attorney fees. The two-year FMLA clock runs through the entire grievance. Do both, from the start.
Read fired after asking for FMLA leave if the retaliation began before the leave was approved.
What to do in the first 72 hours
- Forward your FMLA file to a personal account tonight. The request, the certification, the designation notice, every email from the leave administrator, and your attendance printout, before your login stops working.
- Write down every absence the employer counted against you. Match each date to the approved leave; the mismatches are the case.
- Send a written request for your personnel file. Michigan’s Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right to Know Act obligates the employer to let you see and copy it, and the file often shows when the “performance” story was first written down.
- Put any restrictions in writing. A written accommodation request starts your PWDCRA rights and the 182-day clock that goes with them.
- Do not sign the severance yet. The release waives the FMLA claim, and FMLA claims carry liquidated damages that can double the wage loss.
- Let the union file the grievance, then call me anyway. The grievance protects the contract; only a lawsuit protects the statute.
Wayne County FMLA retaliation questions
Can a Wayne County auto plant give me attendance points for absences that were approved as FMLA leave?
No. Absences covered by approved FMLA leave cannot be counted under a no-fault attendance policy, and using them as a step toward discharge is interference with the leave itself. The problem in practice is coding: the absence is approved by the leave administrator but still recorded as an occurrence on the floor. Pull your attendance record and compare it line by line to the approved leave dates. That comparison is often the whole case.
My employer says I abused intermittent FMLA and fired me for fraud. Do I still have a claim?
Possibly, but it is a harder case. Federal courts in Michigan apply an honest-belief rule: an employer that reasonably investigated and genuinely believed you misused leave can prevail even if it was wrong. Your case turns on the quality of the investigation, whether recertification demands exceeded the regulations, and whether coworkers without FMLA were treated the same way. Preserve every communication about the investigation.
I work for the City of Detroit or Wayne County government. Does the FMLA cover public employers?
Yes. Public agencies are covered employers regardless of how many people they employ, and Wayne County’s municipal, county, and university payrolls easily clear the 50-within-75-miles test you still have to meet as an employee. Public employees also have civil-service and union procedures, which run alongside the FMLA claim but do not pause its two-year deadline.
I was fired while my FMLA certification was still pending. Is that interference or retaliation?
It can be both, and I usually plead both. Firing someone to avoid approving leave they are about to become entitled to is interference. Firing someone because they requested leave is retaliation. The request itself is protected once you gave enough notice for the employer to know FMLA might apply; you do not need the approval letter in hand. Save the request and any acknowledgment.
Can Henry Ford Health or the DMC make me recertify my condition every month?
Generally not more often than every 30 days, and only in connection with an absence. If your certification stated a longer duration, the employer ordinarily has to wait until that period ends, though it may ask every six months. More frequent demands are allowed only if circumstances changed significantly or the employer received information casting real doubt on the leave. Repeated demands beyond those limits are evidence of interference.
Talk to an FMLA retaliation lawyer who takes Wayne County cases
If your discipline or discharge tracks your leave, call (313) 701-2448 or schedule a free 15-minute case evaluation. Bring the leave paperwork and the attendance record. I will tell you whether the timeline holds up.
I am Warren Astbury. Harvard Law School, J.D. 2009. More than 50 cases tried to verdict across 15 years, and I represent employees only. I take FMLA retaliation cases from every part of Wayne County, Detroit to Canton.
Working in a neighboring county instead? See the Oakland County, Macomb County, and Washtenaw County FMLA retaliation pages.