2025 Revisions to Washington Paid Family Medical Leave, Paid Sick Leave, and More

The 2025 Washington State Legislative Session brought several leave-related bills of interest to local governments, including changes to the state’s Paid Family and Medical Leave, Paid Sick Leave, and Domestic Violence Leave program.

Local governments should review their personnel policies to ensure consistency with the leave law changes, which will be effective July 27, 2025 (changes to Paid Sick Leave), and January 1, 2026 (changes to Paid Family and Medical Leave and Domestic Violence Leave).

Washington State Paid Family and Medical Leave

In 2017, Washington State adopted its mandatory Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) program, which provides paid leave to employees for various family and medical circumstances, including birth or placement of a child and care of family members with serious health conditions.

Local governments only have a handful of direct responsibilities under the PFML program — collecting employee premium payments, posting notices, and reporting employee wages/hours to the Employment Securities Department (ESD) — but they do have several obligations, including providing employees with job protection while on PFML.

Since its adoption, the PFML program has been modified nearly every year, and 2025 is no exception. The 2025 changes to PFML in HB 1213 take effect on January 1, 2026, and include those outlined below.

Employment protections while on leave

Previously, only employers with more than 50 employees were required to provide job protection for the duration of the employee’s PFML leave. In this context, job protection means that the employee is entitled to be restored to the position they held when the leave began or to an equivalent position with equivalent benefits, pay, and other terms and conditions of employment.

Under the new law, smaller local governments must provide job protection to their employees by the following deadlines:

• Employers with 25 or more employees: starting January 2, 2026
• Employers with 15 or more employees: starting January 1, 2027
• Employers with 8 or more employees: starting January 1, 2028

The length of employment required for job protection has also been changed. Effective January 1, 2026, employees who have worked for their current employer for at least 180 days qualify for protection. The previous standard was 1,250 hours.

Stacking PFML with other leave

The legislature also addressed what has been referred to as the 'stacking' of leave, where an employee would take leave under the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) without invoking their benefits under the PFML program and then later take PFML for the same or different qualifying reasons. 

While state law (RCW 50A.15.110) requires that PFML run concurrently with FMLA leave, employees cannot be required to take PFML leave. Thus, it is possible for an employee to stack their leave by first taking unpaid FMLA leave and next taking paid PFML leave, since the employer cannot require the employee to take PFML first. The leave would run consecutively, not concurrently — resulting in a potential total of 24 weeks of employment protection rather than just 12 weeks if leave is taken concurrently. (The opposite cannot be true: if the employee chooses to take PFML first, the FMLA leave runs concurrently, not consecutively, unless the employer’s policy allows the leave to be taken consecutively.)

To address this, the legislature extended employment protection to any period of unpaid FMLA leave where the employee was eligible for PFML but did not use it. While this doesn’t prohibit the stacking of leave, it does provide a disincentive in stacking leave because the stacked leave is no longer fully protected. The bill report explains this as follows:

A mechanism for addressing stacking of certain employment protection benefits is established. Employment protection is extended to any period of unpaid leave protected by the FMLA where the employee was eligible for PFML Program benefits but did not apply for and receive those benefits, so long as the employer provides certain written notices to the employee. The written notices must include certain elements identified in the bill, including that the leave is counting against any permitted period of employment protection under the PFML Program and the FMLA, and that the use of unpaid leave does not affect the employee's eligibility for benefits in the PFML Program. Maximum periods of employment protection are established. Except by written agreement between the employer and employee or a bargaining unit, the employee forfeits the right to employment restoration if the employee does not exercise it upon the earlier of the:

• first scheduled work day following the period of leave; or
• first scheduled work day following a continuous period of, or combined intermittent periods of a total of, 16 typical workweeks of leave taken during a period of 52 consecutive calendar weeks, except this period is extended to 18 typical workweeks of leave during a period of 52 consecutive calendar weeks if any of the leave was taken as a result of a serious health condition with a pregnancy resulting in incapacity.

Maintenance of healthcare coverage

The law has also made some modifications to healthcare coverage, requiring that all employers (regardless of size) maintain an employee’s health care coverage during any period of PFML under which the employee is also entitled to employment protection.

PFML notices

HB 1213 adds several new provisions that must be included in the PFML notice an employer must post, including include eligibility requirements, possible weekly benefits, application processes, employment protection rights, nondiscrimination rights, and other protections. ESD offers downloadable PFML posters on their webpage detailing employer responsibilities under the PFML, although these were last updated in December 2024 and do not yet appear to include the additional required language.

Claim duration

The minimum claim duration payment is decreased from eight hours of consecutive leave to four hours.

Small business grants

While ‘small business’ grants have already been available to lessen the impact on employers when they have employees out for an extended time, the legislature has divided the grant programs into two categories in HB 1213: one for employers with 50-150 employees and one for employers with less than 50 employees.

The only difference between the two categories is as follows:

• Employers with less than 50 employees are eligible for a grant of $3,000 if the employer hires a temporary worker to replace an employee on family or medical leave for a period of at least seven days or the employer incurs significant additional wage-related costs due to the employee’s leave.
• Employers with 50-150 employees are also eligible for a $3,000 grant if the employer hires a temporary worker to replace an employee on family medical leave for at least seven days. Alternatively, these employers are also eligible for a $1,000 grant if the employer incurs significant additional wage-related costs due to the employee’s leave. The employer cannot receive both grants at the same time, with one exception: if the employer receives the $1,000 grant, then they can receive the difference between the grants (i.e., $2,000) if the employee on leave extends their planned leave and a temporary worker is hired.

Washington State Paid Sick Leave

Washington’s Paid Sick Leave law requires employers to provide employees one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked, which can be used for specific absences outlined in state law. HB 1875 adds the following as an eligible absence for use of paid sick leave: the need to prepare for or attend judicial or administrative immigration proceedings involving the employee or the employee’s family member.

Domestic Violence Leave

The Domestic Violence Leave Act allows an employee to take leave from work to obtain assistance with respect to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. SB 5101 expands the allowable reasons for taking leave to include obtaining assistance needed with respect to hate crimes as defined in RCW 9A.36.080.

Conclusion

MRSC’s Leave Laws and Policies webpage series provides in-depth information about the PFML, Paid Sick Leave, Domestic Violence Leave, and more. We will be updating these webpages to reflect the new legislative changes.