Sponsors (11)
Official title: Amend the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and title 5, United States Code, to permit leave to care for a domestic partner, parent-in-law, or adult child, or another related individual, who has a serious health condition, and to allow employees to take, as additional leave, parental involvement and family wellness leave to participate in or attend their children's and grand children's educational and extracurricular activities or meet family care needs.
Introduced February 5, 2025 by Richard Joseph Durbin · Last progress February 5, 2025
The bill broadens who can take job‑protected family and medical leave and adds small, flexible intermittent leave (helping parents, caregivers, federal employees, and some servicemembers) at the cost of higher administrative, staffing, and fiscal burdens for employers, agencies, and taxpayers and some practical limits on pay and last‑minute access for workers.
Employees (including parents, family caregivers, and those caring for people with disabilities) can take FMLA leave to care for a substantially wider set of relatives and close associates (e.g., adult children, children of domestic partners, siblings, grandparents, and other close associates), expanding who can access job‑protected caregiving time.
Employees in nontraditional households (including unmarried committed partners and state-registered domestic partners) — particularly federal employees — receive explicit leave rights to care for partners and other nontraditional relatives, reducing ambiguity about eligibility for those relationships.
Parents, family caregivers, and federal employees gain a limited new intermittent entitlement — up to 24 hours per year (and up to 4 hours per 30 days) — to attend school or community activities or routine family medical care, giving short‑duration flexibility without using larger FMLA blocks.
Employers — especially small businesses — face higher administrative burdens, more leave requests, and greater staffing and backfill costs, raising compliance and personnel expenses.
Expanded eligibility and additional intermittent leave may reduce take‑home pay for workers who must take unpaid time and can also deplete workers' existing paid leave balances if substituted, leaving some families with less paid time for illness or extended care.
The open-ended 'close association' standard and broader relationship definitions could trigger disputes, verification challenges, and litigation over whether relationships qualify for leave.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Expands FMLA and federal leave definitions to many more relatives and close associates and creates a new 24-hour-per-year (4-hour per 30-day) parental/family-wellness leave entitlement.
Expands who counts as a family member under federal and private-sector family and medical leave laws to include a long list of relatives, domestic partners, adult children, and any person with a close association equivalent to family. It also creates a new limited parental-involvement and family-wellness leave entitlement (up to 24 hours per 12-month period, no more than 4 hours per 30-day period) that can be taken intermittently or on a reduced schedule and may be substituted with accrued paid leave under specified rules. The bill adds parallel definitions and leave rights for federal employees and amends existing FMLA and related federal statutes so those new relationships and the short parental/family-wellness leave apply across covered workplaces and federal employment.