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Reservists Are Like Pregnant Women: A Fertile Battleground For A Reinterpretation Of Userra, Brian Kanner

Brian Kanner

The article examines the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) newly issued regulations of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act of 1994—the act that guarantees workplace non-discrimination and reemployment rights to our military reservists. Under the regulations, reservists are given non-seniority rights only if the employer offers them to “similarly situated” non-military employees on a “comparable” non-military leave. Making comparisons to pregnant women subject to policies formed for a male-centric workplace, I argue that the assessment for determining a reservist’s non-seniority rights is inherently disingenuous: what employee is truly similarly situated to a reservist called to duty and what non-military leave …