State Passes Paid Sick Leave Law

On May 24, 2023, Gov. Walz signed a bill providing paid sick and safe leave to employees in the state. Under the new law, effective January 1, 2024, employees (including part-time and temporary employees) performing work for their employer in Minnesota for at least 80 hours in a year may accrue up to 48 hours of this leave per year (at a rate of a minimum of one hour of this leave for every 30 hours worked). Independent contractors are exempt.

Employees can take this leave for the following reasons:

• The employee’s mental or physical illness, treatment or preventive care;
• A family member’s mental or physical illness, treatment or preventive care;
• Absence due to domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking of the employee or a family member;
• Closure of the employee’s workplace due to weather or public emergency or closure of a family member’s school or care facility due to weather or public emergency; and
• When determined by a health authority or healthcare professional that the employee or family member is at risk of infecting others with a communicable disease.

Employees may use earned sick and safe time for the following family members:

• Child, including foster child, adult child, legal ward, child for whom the employee is legal guardian or child to whom the employee stands or stood in loco parentis (in place of a parent);
• Spouse or registered domestic partner;
• Sibling, stepsibling or foster sibling;
• Biological, adoptive or foster parent, stepparent or a person who stood in loco parentis (in place of a parent) when the employee was a minor child;
• Grandchild, foster grandchild or step-grandchild;
• Grandparent or step-grandparent;
• A child of a sibling of the employee;
• A sibling of the parents of the employee;
• A child-in-law or sibling-in-law;
• Any of the family members listed above of an employee’s spouse or registered domestic partner;
• Any other individual related by blood or whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship; and
• Up to one individual annually designated by the employee.

In addition to granting this leave, employers are required to:

• Include the total number of earned sick and safe time hours accrued and available for use, as well as the total number of earned sick and safe time hours used, on earnings statements provided to employees at the end of each pay period; and
• Provide employees with a notice by January 1, 2024, or at the start of employment, whichever is later (the state’s Department of Labor and Industry will prepare a uniform employee notice that employers can use). The notice should be in English and in an employee’s primary language if that is not English, informing them about earned sick and safe time.
• Include a sick and safe time notice in the employee handbook if the employer has an employee handbook.

Although this law is statewide, it does not preempt city ordinances that provide similar leave (articles covering ordinances in Bloomington, Duluth and Minneapolis can be found in an earlier editions of Compliance Corner here and here). Employers must follow the applicable law that provides the greater protections to their employees.

Since this is a new program, there are not many details about how the state will administer it. We will report new information concerning the program in future editions of Compliance Corner. Employers with employees in the state should be aware of this new program.

SF 3035, Article 12 »
Earned Sick and Safe Time Website »