The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides job-protected, unpaid time off to certain U.S. employees for pregnancy, childbirth or adoption or during periods of personal or family illness. One basis upon which eligible employees can take FMLA leave is to care for a family member with a serious health condition, but the language of the statute limits covered family members to only an employee’s parent, spouse or child. Not siblings.

That is why when Celestia Chapman approached her employer, Brentlinger Enterprises dba the Midwestern Auto Group (“MAG”), in 2019 to take continuous FMLA leave to care for her adult sister who was dying of cancer in another state, MAG, a luxury car dealership in Columbus, Ohio, confidently (if unsympathetically) denied her request. Ms. Chapman exhausted her accrued paid time off traveling back and forth to Kentucky to provide daily care for her sister in her final days, providing the type of care a parent might provide an infant. Due to her sister’s advanced illness, Ms. Chapman provided care with all activities of daily living—cleaning her home, shopping for groceries, cooking her food, spoon-feeding her, toileting and later changing her diapers, bathing her, administering her medicine, paying her bills, driving her to medical appointments and finally tending to her bed sores as her approached her final hours. After Ms. Chapman exhausted her paid time off, MAG provided her a brief unpaid, non-FMLA leave of absence and modified her...

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