Sponsors (208)
Introduced September 16, 2025 by Rosa L. Delauro · Last progress September 16, 2025
The bill creates a broad federal paid family and medical leave program that would provide meaningful income and job protections for many caregivers and survivors, but does so at added fiscal and administrative cost while leaving gaps and privacy risks that could limit access for irregular, very low‑paid workers and impose burdens on states and employers.
Parents and family caregivers (including those taking leave for their own serious health conditions) gain a new federally administered paid family and medical leave benefit with defined eligibility, timely monthly payments, job‑restoration protections, and anti‑retaliation safeguards to preserve employment and health coverage during leave.
Survivors of domestic or sexual violence can take paid leave to obtain safety or support services, improving access to critical health and safety resources.
Self‑employed and previously unemployed workers are explicitly included (via self‑employment income rules and legacy‑State employment treatments), widening program access beyond traditional W‑2 employees.
Workers with irregular hours, gig or intermittent schedules, very low recent earnings, or small amounts of caregiving time (months under 4 hours) risk being excluded or severely limited by eligibility and calculation rules (earnings floor, lookback for 'regular workweek', caregiving hours cap), reducing access for many low‑paid and precarious workers.
The program raises fiscal and employer costs—new federal administrative staffing and offices, ongoing benefit payments, employer compliance costs (job restoration, health coverage continuation), and risks that grant formulas may undercompensate States—placing burdens on taxpayers, small businesses, and state budgets.
Mandatory state-to-federal data transfers and broader cross‑agency data sharing create meaningful privacy and confidentiality risks for claimants by exposing individual‑level information (names, dates, amounts).
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Creates a federal paid family and medical leave insurance program with eligibility rules, a tiered benefit formula, an SSA office to administer benefits, and grants to qualifying State programs.
Creates a federal paid family and medical leave insurance program that pays eligible workers a monthly benefit when they take leave to care for a qualifying family member, address their own serious health condition, or assist victims of qualifying violence. The bill sets detailed eligibility rules and a tiered benefit formula tied to prior earnings, establishes an Office of Paid Family and Medical Leave inside the Social Security Administration to run the program, provides transitional grants to existing State paid‑leave programs that meet standards, requires regulations and an advisory body, and orders periodic government reporting on implementation and delays.