What You Need to Know:
- Effective November 21, 2024, Massachusetts employers must allow employees to use Massachusetts Earned Sick Time to address the employee’s or the employee’s spouse’s physical or mental health needs related to pregnancy loss or a failed assisted reproduction, adoption, or surrogacy.
- This amendment to the Massachusetts Earned Sick Time Law reflects a recent trend that has seen select states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota, add reproductive loss and/or bereavement as statutorily protected paid or unpaid covered events.
As part of a larger bill [2024 Acts - Section 186] focused on improving health services for pregnant women and expanding health care coverage to cover non-hospital providers (e.g., midwives, doulas, birthing centers), the Massachusetts legislature also expanded the reasons for which eligible employees may use available earned sick time under the Commonwealth’s Earned Sick Time Law. The amended law now specifically allows use of sick time for a pregnancy loss, unsuccessful assisted reproduction (such as in vitro fertilization (IVF)), or a failed adoption or surrogacy. Sick time is available to address both the physical and mental effects of such an event on an employee or their spouse. The amendment to the Earned Sick Time Law does not define what constitutes a “pregnancy loss, or a failed assisted reproduction, adoption or surrogacy.”
Massachusetts appears to be the first jurisdiction to expressly include these types of reproductive loss events as a specific reason for which employees can use paid sick time. However, even prior to this amendment, Massachusetts employees would likely have been able to use sick time to cover these additional reasons for use. For example, employees who experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth or are the spouse of an individual who experienced this type of loss, would have been entitled to use available earned sick time to care for their own mental or physical medical condition or the mental or physical medical condition experienced by their spouse.
Massachusetts’ inclusion of these new reasons to use sick time reflects a broader movement towards providing employees time off to address these types of significant life events.[1] As noted above, Illinois and California have passed bereavement leave laws that provide unpaid bereavement leave to employees who experience a reproductive loss event (i.e., miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoption/surrogacy, unsuccessful assisted reproduction). The California law allows up to 5 days per qualifying event and the Illinois law up to 10 days. This unpaid time off is in addition to the (a) paid sick time provided in California by the State’s Healthy Workplace Healthy Family Act, and (b) paid time off provided in Illinois by the State’s Paid Leave for All Workers Act. Outside of California and Illinois, there has been a general trend by employers to include reproductive loss as a covered reason under employer-provided bereavement leave policies or to offer a separate reproductive loss event leave.
Additionally, several paid sick leave laws recently added bereavement leave as a covered reason for use under their respective laws.[2] In August 2023, Colorado amended its statewide paid sick leave law to expand its protected reasons for use, including for certain bereavement-related events.[3] Then, in late-May 2024, Minnesota amended its statewide paid sick leave law in a number of ways. One of these changes included allowing sick time use for certain bereavement-related events.[4]
Employers with Massachusetts employees should review and revise their paid sick time policies to include the expanded reasons provided for by the amended Act no later than November 21, 2024. This is also a perfect time of year for employers to start planning for an annual handbook review to ensure that their policies are up-to-date.
[1] For more information on the various ways in which select state leave and time off laws protect certain absences related to bereavement, please refer to Episode 19 of Seyfarth’s Take It or Leave It Podcast.
[2] While not recent updates, bereavement-related absences are also covered under the Oregon and Tacoma, WA paid sick leave laws.
[3] The specific Colorado paid sick leave law reason for use involving bereavement-related events covers the employee’s need to grieve, attend funeral services or a memorial, or deal with financial and legal matters that arise after the death of a family member.
[4] The specific Minnesota paid sick leave law reason for use involving bereavement-related events covers an employee’s need to make arrangements for or attend funeral services or a memorial, or address financial or legal matters that arise after the death of a family member.
