1 White v. United Airlines, Inc., 987 F.3d 616, 627 (7th Cir. 2021).
2 38 U.S.C. § 4316(b)(1) and 20 C.F.R. § 1002.7(c).
3 While the Seventh Circuit refused rehearing in White, the time has not yet run for a discretionary appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court through a petition for a writ of certiorari.
4Hoefert v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 438 F. Supp. 3d 724, 739 (N.D. Tex. 2020).
5Id.
6Moss v. United Airlines, Inc., 420 F. Supp. 3d 768, 775 (N.D. Ill. 2019).
7 See, Huntsman v. Sw. Airlines Co., No. 19-CV-00083-PJH, 2021 WL 391300, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 3, 2021), and note that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to entertain Southwest’s appeal from the district court’s class certification decision without opinion on March 10, 2021, in Jayson Huntsman v. Southwest Airlines Co., 21-80010 (stating simply, “[t]he court, in its discretion, denies the petition for permission to appeal the district court’s February 3, 2021 order granting class action certification..”).

The Seventh Circuit Decision in White

While the Seventh Circuit did not hold that United must pay for military leave, it did reverse the District Court’s dismissal and remand the case for the comparability analysis that it found the District Court had prematurely cut off. The Appellate Court rejected the District Court’s conclusion that providing the United pilots with the same rights and benefits associated with other comparable leave would amount to a de facto mandate to provide paid military leave, noting that “USERRA mandates only equality of treatment; it does not specify how generous or how parsimonious an employer’s paid leave policies must be.” So, for example, an employer that provides no paid leave is not required to provide paid military leave; USERRA only requires employers to provide paid military leave if they provide paid leave in other comparable nonmilitary leave settings.