A Melrose, Massachusetts, firefighter who also served as an officer in the Air National Guard challenged the City of Melrose’s interpretation of Massachusetts General Laws c. 33, § 59(a), which requires participating public employers to provide paid military leave.
The operative facts were undisputed. The firefighter worked a schedule consisting of twenty-four-hour shifts, each beginning at 7 a.m. and ending the following day. Under the collective bargaining agreement, a twenty-four-hour shift was treated as two separate shifts for vacation or sick leave purposes. Throughout his employment, the firefighter periodically missed shifts due to military training and active duty. During the relevant years, he missed well over forty twenty-four-hour shifts in several federal fiscal years. The City nevertheless took the position that § 59(a) required payment only for service within the first forty consecutive calendar days of any given fiscal year, and that each missed twenty-four-hour shift counted as two compensable days.
The firefighter sought a declaratory judgment that § 59(a) entitled him to pay for forty twenty-four-hour shifts per federal fiscal year. The Massachusetts Superior Court agreed with the City and entered summary judgment in its favor. The Appeals Court of Massachusetts reversed.
The Court began with the statutory text; § 59(a) provides full pay “not exceeding 40 days in any federal fiscal year.” Applying the statute’s plain meaning, the Court held that the forty-day entitlement is not limited to consecutive days. The statute “does not impose any requirement that those forty days be consecutive,” and the Massachusetts Legislature’s omission of a consecutiveness requirement was deliberate, particularly where other subsections of the statute do expressly refer to “consecutive days.” In addition to that textual analysis, the Court explained that the structure and purpose of the statute reinforced its conclusion. The statue applies both to active duty and to recurring reserve obligations, including National Guard drills and annual training. Imposing the City’s asserted consecutiveness requirement would lead to inequitable results for reservists, who perform intermittent service throughout the fiscal year, and would undermine the statute’s evident purpose of encouraging public employees to serve in the militia and reserves. The Court therefore declined to read a consecutiveness requirement into § 59(a) where the Legislature had not done so and ruled against the City’s interpretation.
The Court also rejected the City’s assertion that a twenty-four-hour shift counts as two separate “days” of military leave, relying on the statute’s express definition of “day” to mean “any 24- hour period regardless of calendar day.”
Driscoll v. City of Melrose, 2025 WL 3247580 (Mass. App. Ct. Nov. 21, 2025).