fired in PA for "handbook violation" 2 days after FMLA request

i'm in PA. been at this company 4 years, no writeups. monday morning i emailed HR about taking FMLA for surgery in june. wednesday they fire me citing "violations of section 4.2 of the employee handbook" — which is some vague clause about "professional conduct."

they refused to give me specifics and the termination paperwork doesn't list any actual examples. obviously i think this is retaliation but PA is at-will. is there even a case here?

HR person here. timing is everything in retaliation cases and 2 days is "smoking gun" timing. PA is at-will but FMLA preempts at-will when the firing relates to the protected leave request. you need to file an EEOC charge and a DOL FMLA complaint within 300 days.

also write down EVERYTHING you remember about the email, the meeting, the people in the room, what was said. memory fades fast.

same thing happened to my brother in 2023. he got a settlement but it took 14 months. find an employment lawyer who works contingency — most do for FMLA cases because the federal statute has fee-shifting.

I'm Sergei Tokmakov, California attorney (Bar #279869). FMLA retaliation isn't my home turf jurisdictionally but the federal framework is consistent across states.

The McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework applies: you establish a prima facie case (you requested protected leave, you suffered an adverse action, there's a causal connection — temporal proximity of 2 days clearly satisfies this), then the employer offers a non-retaliatory reason (the handbook violation), and you respond by showing that reason is pretextual (you have no prior writeups, the cited rule is vague, no specific conduct was identified).

For PA-specific representation find a local employment lawyer. Most take FMLA cases on contingency because of fee-shifting under 29 U.S.C. 2617(a)(3). EEOC isn't strictly necessary for FMLA claims (those go to DOL or directly to court) but if there's any disability or discrimination angle, file there too. 300-day window.

Document everything now while it's fresh. Informational only.