To allow employers to terminate a troubled but ineligible employee who has just announced their vulnerability offends notions of fairness and runs counter to the stated goals of the FMLA. An equitable process would not force an employee to disclose their personal information until they knew for certain their request would be honored, but there is no mechanism in place to do so, and employees are forced to come asking, vulnerable. To permit employers a mechanism to weed out weakened-but-ineligible employees is to punish workers for seeking benefits.

“Sometimes we do have to give up a lot for work, and -- and frankly, the way I see it in this country, sometimes we have to give up -- not sometimes, oftentimes, we have to give up too much. I don't want to go on a political rant by any means, but -- but -- but we have decided as a country that there is a line there. And -- and you can't treat your employees differently because of their sex. You can't do it because of their race. You can't do it because of their religion. You can't do it because of their sexual orientation or their Veteran status or disability. …this is what are known as protected classes or I like to think about as protected characteristics, it just makes a little more sense to me that way. That because you have one of these characteristics, these things cannot be done to you, or the action can't be based on that.”

“…when these things do go on in this country, and those of us who have the power to stop them don't do them or they are done effectively in our name, then we are just as guilty of that violation.

And now, listen, I am not saying that you need to stop everything you see on the subway, that you need to get involved. It's a big city. It's a complicated place and, whatever, there's a time and a place. However, when you are in a time and when you are at a place when you can do something about this stuff, well, I think that that's the time that we're required to act.”