Paid Sick Leave and Paid Fam­ily Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

Begin­ning in April, many more employ­ees will be eli­gi­ble for paid sick leave and paid time off to care for chil­dren. Pres­i­dent Trump signed the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act on March 18. The paid leave pro­vi­sions will take effect by April 2, and will expire at the end of this year.

Although the law will pro­vide wel­come relief to many employ­ees, many are excluded from its pro­tec­tions, includ­ing those who work for employ­ers with at least 500 employ­ees. The law may also exclude those who work for cer­tain employ­ers with fewer than 50 employ­ees. Here are the basics.

Two Weeks of Emer­gency Paid Sick Leave

Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act, eli­gi­ble employ­ees could be paid for up to ten days of sick leave related to the coro­n­avirus pan­demic.

Who Is Eli­gi­ble for Emer­gency Paid Sick Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

All gov­ern­ment employ­ees are pro­tected by the new law, as are many pri­vate employ­ees. How­ever, those who work for pri­vate employ­ers with 500 or more employ­ees are not cov­ered by the law. In addi­tion, if you are a health care provider or an emer­gency respon­der, your employer has the right to exclude you from these pro­tec­tions. Finally, the new law gives the Sec­re­tary of Labor the author­ity to exempt busi­nesses with fewer than 50 employ­ees, if com­ply­ing with the law would jeop­ar­dize the via­bil­ity of the busi­ness. Depend­ing on how this author­ity is used, many more employ­ees could lose cov­er­age under the law.

Which Con­di­tions Qual­ify for Paid Sick Leave

You are enti­tled to paid leave under the law if you fit into any of these cat­e­gories:

• You are sub­ject to a COVID-​19 quar­an­tine or iso­la­tion order issued by the fed­eral, state, or local gov­ern­ment.
• You have been advised to self-​quarantine due to COVID-​19 con­cerns by a health care provider.
• You are car­ing for some­one who fits into one of the two cat­e­gories above.
• You have symp­toms of COVID-​19 and are seek­ing diag­no­sis.
• You are car­ing for a son or daugh­ter whose school or care facil­ity is closed, or whose child­care provider is unavail­able, due to COVID-​19 con­cerns.
• You are expe­ri­enc­ing a con­di­tion sub­stan­tially sim­i­lar to COVID-​19, as spec­i­fied by the Sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices in con­sul­ta­tion with other gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

How Much Will You Be Paid—and for How Long?

Your leave enti­tle­ment depends on your work hours and rea­son for leave. Eli­gi­ble employ­ees are enti­tled to ten days of paid sick leave accord­ing to their usual work sched­ule. If you work full-​time, you are enti­tled to up to 80 hours of leave. Part-​time employ­ees can take up to the num­ber of hours they work, on aver­age, dur­ing a two-​week period.

The amount you are paid depends on why you need leave:

• If you take time off because you are ill, under self-​quarantine, or sub­ject to a quar­an­tine or iso­la­tion order, you must be paid at your reg­u­lar pay rate or the applic­a­ble min­i­mum wage, whichever is more, up to a max­i­mum of $511 per day or $5,110 total.
• If you take time off to care for a child or another per­son, or because you are suf­fer­ing from a sub­stan­tially sim­i­lar con­di­tion, you are enti­tled to be paid two-​thirds of your reg­u­lar pay rate, up to a cap of $200 per day or $2,000 total.

Up to 12 Weeks of Pub­lic Health Emer­gency Leave to Care for Chil­dren

The new law also expands the fed­eral Fam­ily Med­ical Leave Act (FMLA) to pro­vide paid leave for par­ents who need time off to care for a child whose school is closed or care provider is unavail­able due to a government-​declared emer­gency relat­ing to the coro­n­avirus.

Who Is Eli­gi­ble for Pub­lic Health Emer­gency Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

Sim­i­lar to paid sick leave, employ­ers with 500 or more employ­ees do not have to pro­vide paid pub­lic health emer­gency leave. And the Sec­re­tary of Labor has the right to exempt busi­nesses with fewer than 50 employ­ees if pro­vid­ing the leave would threaten the business’s via­bil­ity. In addi­tion, if you are a health care provider or first respon­der, your employer can decide whether to exempt you.

But an addi­tional restric­tion applies here: Employ­ees are eli­gi­ble only if they have worked for their employer for at least 30 days. This is much more lenient than the require­ment for reg­u­lar unpaid FMLA leave, which requires at least a year of employ­ment, and at least 1,250 hours in the past year.

Which Con­di­tions Qual­ify for Pub­lic Health Emer­gency Leave

You may take pub­lic health emer­gency leave in only one cir­cum­stance: if you can­not work or tele­work because you are car­ing for your son or daugh­ter whose school or care provider is closed or unavail­able because of a COVID-​19 pub­lic health emer­gency. If you are sick or your work­place is closed, you don’t qual­ify for leave under this pro­vi­sion. (The Depart­ment of Labor has pub­lished infor­ma­tion on how the reg­u­lar FMLA applies to COVID-​19 related absences for other rea­sons.)

How Much Will You Be Paid for Emer­gency Leave – and for How Long?

The first ten days of pub­lic health emer­gency leave are unpaid, although you may use (or your employer may require you to use) any accrued paid leave you may have dur­ing that time. After ten days, you are enti­tled to be paid two-​thirds of your usual pay, up to a cap of $200 per day or $10,000 total. You may take up to 12 weeks of pub­lic health emer­gency leave, at your usual work sched­ule.

Get­ting Your Job Back

The FMLA requires employ­ers to restore employ­ees to their job once their leave is through, with a few excep­tions. If you take pub­lic health emer­gency leave, employ­ers with fewer than 25 employ­ees have a bit more lee­way. Your employer does not have to give you back your job if all of the fol­low­ing are true:

• Your posi­tion no longer exists due to eco­nomic or oper­a­tional changes caused by the COVID-​19 emer­gency.
• Your employer makes rea­son­able efforts to restore you to an equiv­a­lent posi­tion.
• If those efforts fail, your employer makes rea­son­able efforts to con­tact you if an equiv­a­lent posi­tion becomes avail­able in the year after your need for leave ends.

The paid leave pro­vi­sions are brand new, and we’ll learn more soon about how they will be inter­preted and enforced. For now, how­ever, at least some employ­ees will get some relief from the huge finan­cial toll of the coro­n­avirus emer­gency.

More Infor­ma­tion

To learn more about work­ers’ rights in your state, see Legal Consumer’s wage and hour law learn­ing cen­ter.

If you’ve already lost your job and want to learn more about unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits in your state, see our unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits learn­ing cen­ter.