State Paid Family Leave Patchwork Continues to Grow as Maine Joins the Party

Maine is set to become the thirteenth state requiring paid family and medical leave for private employees through a law recently signed by Gov. Janet Mills (D). The law would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave per year with the cost split between the employer and employee. More than a quarter of U.S. states now require paid family and medical leave.

The law covers all employers in the state with at least 15 employees. Any employee who has earned at least $6,216 in the previous year is eligible for leave under the law and can take the leave immediately after starting employment. Other features of the law include:

• The program will provide 90% wage replacement for employees making less or equal to 50% of $1,036 per week, and 66% wage replacement for weekly wages above that 50% threshold. 
  
  
• Employees may take up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the usual FMLA qualifying reasons – however, “family member” is defined expansively as any “individual with whom the covered individual has a significant personal bond...regardless of biological or legal relationship.” 
  
  
• The program is funded through a 1% payroll tax split evenly by the employer and employee – employers with less than 15 employees must still offer leave to employees under the law, but are exempt from paying into the program. 
  
  
• Employers offering comparable private paid leave plans can opt out of the program but cannot impose costs on employees greater than would be under the law. 
  
  
• The law will go into effect in 2026, with the payroll tax starting in 2025. 

Notably, the law has been lauded as the product of a bipartisan commission made up of Democratic and Republican legislators and citizens. That result highlights the increasing appetite for expanded paid leave from both sides of the aisle, and in red and blue states alike. The law is also the latest to expand the definition of “family member” to include non-legal or biological relationships, an increasingly common feature of such laws. 

Outlook: More than a quarter of states (and D.C.) now require paid family and medical leave, mainly on both the west and east coasts. Despite the growing state patchwork, paid family and medical leave remains elusive at the federal level, with another Congress nearly come and gone without any meaningful movement on the issue. The Maine law – with an evenly split payroll tax and opt outs for qualifying private plans – could provide an agreeable bipartisan blueprint.