Employee’s right to return to original duties after parental leave

At a glance

• The Swedish Labour Court reaffirmed in a recent judgment strong protection for employees returning from parental leave.
• Employers cannot disadvantage employees by changing duties without consent if previous tasks still exist.
• Negative effect matters more than employer intent; parental leave need only be one contributing factor.
• Reassignment is only allowed if it is an unavoidable consequence of the leave, which was not the case here.

The municipality was ordered to pay SEK50,000 (approx. EUR4,600) in damages for breaching the Parental Leave Act.

The Swedish Labour Court recently issued an important judgment (AD 2025 nr 53) concerning the strong protection afforded to employees on parental leave and their right to return to their duties. This judgment demonstrates that Swedish employment law provides robust protection for employees not only during parental leave but also upon their return, and shows how this protection can limit an employer’s otherwise broad right to manage and allocate work. The case serves as a reminder that employers must carefully plan how employees will return from parental leave.

In the examined case, a benefits administrator who was employed by a municipality primarily handled elderly care cases before her parental leave. Upon her return, the municipality reassigned her to handle LSS (support for persons with disabilities) and social psychiatry cases – different case categories governed by different legislation.

A central protection under the Swedish Parental Leave Act is the prohibition against disadvantageous treatment. Employers cannot treat employees unfavourably for reasons connected to parental leave when making decisions about work allocation, employment conditions, or other employment matters. In this case, the Labour Court clarified several principles. The focus is on the negative effect, not the employer’s motive. What matters is whether a negative effect occurs, not the intention behind it. An employee who receives different work tasks than before, which they neither desire nor consent to, suffers such a negative effect. Parental leave does not need to be the sole or decisive reason for the disadvantageous treatment; it is enough that parental leave is one of several causes for the employer’s action.

The question is whether the employee has been treated worse than an employee who was not on leave would have been treated, not whether they are treated the same as employees absent for other acceptable reasons (such as illness). There is an exception where the prohibition does not apply if the different treatment is a necessary consequence of the parental leave, meaning unavoidable unless the employee receives more favourable treatment than others in a way that would be unfair or clearly unjustified.

The Labour Court found the following:

• Specialisation matters: The employer’s organisational structure had led administrators to become specialised in their respective case categories, almost never handling other types of cases. In this context, handling different case categories constituted different work tasks requiring reassignment.
• The employee did not consent to the change: They wished to continue handling the same type of cases as before their parental leave (work that still existed but was now performed by colleagues with shorter tenure).
• Causation was established: Because the disadvantageous work allocation occurred precisely when and because the employee concluded their parental leave, it was at least partly connected to the parental leave.
• The reassignment was not a necessary consequence of the parental leave: Their previous duties still existed, and it could not reasonably be perceived as unfair, unreasonable, or clearly unjustified for them to return to them. Nothing suggested that other administrators could not learn to handle the cases now assigned to them.

The municipality was found liable for damages of SEK50,000 (approximately EUR4,600).