Background
Daniel P. Mook, a former Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney for the City of Martinsville, Virginia, requested Family and Medical Leave Act leave in 2021 to care for his mother. Mook completed the medical-provider section of the certification form himself using information from an earlier certification and his knowledge of his mother’s condition. A registered nurse then signed the form, and Mook submitted it to the City and Commonwealth’s Attorney G. Andrew Hall.
After Hall’s assistant contacted the provider’s office and reported concerns about the form’s authenticity, Hall questioned Mook. Mook admitted completing the form but denied deceiving the nurse and offered to obtain a new certification. Hall nevertheless fired him. Mook sued Hall and the City for FMLA interference. The district court denied Hall summary judgment, reasoning that regulations clearly established Mook’s right to an opportunity to cure the authenticity problem before the provider was contacted.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth Circuit held that it had jurisdiction over Hall’s interlocutory appeal because the denial of qualified immunity turned on a legal question. It further held that, in November 2021, it was not clearly established that an employer had to give an employee an opportunity to cure suspected inauthenticity in an FMLA certification before contacting the certifying medical provider to authenticate it.
The court explained that a reasonable official could read the regulations’ cure requirement as applying only to certifications that are “incomplete” or “insufficient,” not to authenticity concerns. The court therefore vacated the denial of qualified immunity. It did not decide whether qualified immunity is available for FMLA interference claims at all; instead, it remanded for the district court to resolve that antecedent statutory question in the first instance.
Key Takeaways
- The Fourth Circuit did not decide whether Hall violated the FMLA or whether employees generally lack a cure right when authenticity is questioned.
- The court held only that the asserted cure-before-authentication right was not clearly established in November 2021.
- On remand, the district court must determine whether Congress made qualified immunity available as a defense to an FMLA interference claim.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes between the merits of an FMLA interference claim and the clearly established-law inquiry used for qualified immunity. Although the regulations require an opportunity to cure incomplete or insufficient certifications, the court found sufficient ambiguity about authenticity concerns to preclude treating Mook’s asserted right as beyond debate.
The remand places a potentially consequential threshold issue before the district court: whether qualified immunity can be applied to FMLA claims despite the statute’s silence and its inclusion of a limited good-faith defense. The Fourth Circuit emphasized that courts may not simply assume qualified immunity applies whenever a public official is sued individually.