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KING v. ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL Opinion of the Court
Like the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits, the Third has engrafted a reasonableness requirement onto § 2024(d). Eidukonis v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, 873 F. 2d 688, 694 (1989).7 The Fourth Circuit, on the other hand, has declined to do so. Kolkhorst v. Tilghman, 897 F. 2d 1282, 1286 (1990), cert. pending, No. 89–1949. We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict, 498 U. S. 1081 (1991), and now reverse the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit. II We start with the text of § 2024(d), see Schreiber v. Burlington Northern, Inc., 472 U. S. 1, 5 (1985), which is free of any express conditions upon the provisions in contention here: “[Any covered person] shall upon request be granted a leave of absence by such person’s employer for the period required to perform active duty for training or inactive duty training in the Armed Forces of the United States. Upon such employee’s release from a period of such . . . [duty] . . . such employee shall be permitted to return to such employee’s position with such seniority, status, pay, and vacation as such employee would have had if such employee had not been absent for such purposes.” 38 U. S. C. § 2024(d). Thus, the Fourth Circuit could call the subsection’s guarantee of leave and reemployment “unequivocal and unqualified,” Kolkhorst, supra, at 1286, and the Eleventh Circuit itself observed that the subsection “does not address the 7
See also Lemmon v. County of Santa Cruz, 686 F. Supp. 797, 802 (ND Cal. 1988) (adopting reasonableness requirement set forth in Lee v. Pensacola, 634 F. 2d 886 (CA5 1981)); Bottger v. Doss Aeronautical Servs., Inc., 609 F. Supp. 583, 585 (MD Ala. 1985) (following Lee); Anthony v. Basic Am. Foods, Inc., 600 F. Supp. 352, 354–355 (ND Cal. 1984) (both parties accepting reasonableness test).
