Human Resource Blog

Maternity Leave

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How many states in the union offer expectant mothers protection or maternity leave beyond the federal FMLA?

Not as many as you might assume. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 39 of the 50 U.S. states have no significant “maternity leave” or short-term disability laws on the books. Instead, these states rely on the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 to provide leave for all types of family and medical situations… including childbirth.

To be fair, at least 11 of those 39 states have laws on the books that extend the FMLA. Those laws either provide similar benefits to employees of the state and municipal governments, or they extend the same benefits to smaller companies. In some states, employers with as few as 5 employees must offer leave very similar to FMLA, under state law.

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, workers are entitled to up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year. The employees must meet certain eligibility requirements in terms of hours worked in the previous 52 weeks and wages earned. This law applies to U.S. employees when the employer has 50 or more workers within 75 miles.

The federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, or PDA, requires that IF employers offer benefits for other types of leave, they offer the same benefits for maternity leave. However, any employer who offers no benefits for other types of leave (such as short-term disability or medical leave) is well within their rights to offer no maternity benefits.

The remaining 11 states offer significant disability or maternity leave laws at the state level. These include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

There are 5 states in the union that offer state-mandated short-term disability programs. These are New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, California, and Rhode Island. In these states, new mothers and pregnant women are entitled to payments ranging from 50% to 67% of their average weekly income.

Please note that even in states with short-term disability payments, the payments are only for the period of time that the woman is medically certified as physically unable to work. For most women with a normal pregnancy, that is a period of about 10 weeks, from 4 weeks before the due date to 6 weeks afterwards. Of course, women with pregnancy complications or who have a caesarian may be on disability much longer. All the states except California cap the disability at 26 weeks.