State Paid Leave Laws to Grow Next Year in Number, Variation

State-mandated paid family leave programs are set to expand in 2026, further complicating multistate businesses’ compliance as benefits become available in Delaware, Maine, and Minnesota while others—including Virginia—are poised to enact a program.

Thirteen states plus Washington, DC, have put in place paid family and medical leave laws guaranteeing most workers access to benefits funded by payroll taxes. They ensure private-sector employees can take time off, typically up to 12 weeks annually, for covered reasons such as bonding with a new child or providing care for a spouse undergoing cancer treatments.

As new programs come online, other states such as Colorado and Rhode Island are expanding their existing paid leave laws to cover additional reasons to qualify and offer more weeks annually.

States have pushed ahead on the issue as the momentum toward a nationwide paid leave policy has focused largely on incentive-based measures, such as an employer tax credit Congress made permanent this year. The state-law changes, while supporting workers’ personal needs, add to the challenges businesses face when navigating differing requirements across states.

“It’s getting more complex not less complex, unfortunately, for employers,” said Howard M. Wexler, an attorney with Seyfarth Shaw LLP in New York. “The federal government has not been able to act and adopt their own system, so states keep going their own way.”

A Democratic-majority Congress in 2021-22 narrowly missed passing a federally funded paid leave program. Since then, a House bipartisan working group has floated proposals that offer grant funding for states to implement their programs and harmonize their requirements to lessen variations across the country.

Likewise, another 10 states have enacted voluntary or private-insurance laws aimed at paid family leave access.

Paid leave advocates say these measures aren’t likely to substantially boost availability of paid time off for family and medical needs, particularly for low-wage workers who are least likely to already have benefits through an employer-provided program.

“There’s always the possibility these interventions will marginally increase access,” said Vicki Shabo, senior fellow at the New America think tank. “So far I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of evidence that gaps are being closed or that there’s substantial uptake resulting from these incentive approaches.”

New, Expanded Benefits

Paid leave programs in Delaware and Minnesota will go live Jan. 1, while Maine will begin paying out benefits in May. The details vary, with Delaware exempting small businesses from participation while Minnesota’s law covers all workers regardless of employer size, for example.

The full launch of a similar Maryland program has been delayed to 2028.

Employers covered by a paid leave program for the first time should prepare to temporarily staff positions left vacant for a few months when an employee takes leave, said Bethany J. Venegoni, an attorney with Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Minneapolis.

“It’s important for employers to get a grasp on what the temporary workforce looks like right now for certain positions, so when the time comes they have the right contacts to back fill those needs,” she said.

Businesses that are new to paid leave benefits also should educate employees to avoid misconceptions, such as “how the leave can be taken, and what resources are available to them, both internally and on the state’s own website,” said Caitlin R. Gehlen, an attorney with Lathrop GPM LLP in Minneapolis. “Employee leaves will be much easier to plan for and manage if you open the lines of communication sooner rather than later.”

Colorado’s program will expand in January to offer 12 weeks of paid leave specifically for parents with a newborn child in the neonatal intensive care unit, in addition to the 12 weeks of paid leave already available for bonding with a new child.

The state in 2020 became the first to approve a paid family leave program via ballot initiative. And it’s now the first state to create additional leave for parents of NICU babies, said Jared Make, vice president at the advocacy group A Better Balance. More states are likely to copy the policy, given the challenges parents encounter when they have to use up their bonding leave before the baby comes home from the hospital.

“We’re going to see more proposals and interests in specifically providing for the unique needs of NICU parents next year,” he said.

Rhode Island lawmakers also have enacted a handful of expansions to the state’s paid leave law. The revisions will raise the percentage of workers’ wages that the benefits replace during their time off, increase the maximum annual paid leave to eight weeks, and add bone marrow and organ donation to the covered reasons for taking paid leave.

State Legislation to Watch

Virginia is the most likely state to pass a new paid leave law next year.

The Democratic-majority legislature has passed bills to create a paid leave program each of the past two years, but Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed both.

Following November’s election, incoming Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger is expected to support paid leave, and lawmakers already have prefiled a bill (SB 2) for the 2026 session alongside a list of other progressive workplace policies.

Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, and New Mexico could pass their own paid leave programs as well, given the efforts of recent legislative sessions, Wexler said.

Meanwhile, states with existing programs continue exploring ways to expand them, he added. A New Jersey bill (S2950) that recently won committee approval would lower the threshold for small businesses exempt from the state program to 15 employees, down from 30.

A Pennsylvania bill (HB 200) to create a new paid leave program has some bipartisan support and is another good candidate to become law, Shabo said.

“We’re hoping the continued statewide work and the number of states coming to the table on this issue will really lead Congress to take this on more fully,” Make said.