Last-minute paid leave negotiations leave Minnesota families in limbo

Ethan Feuer saw the headline and knew immediately it wasn’t good.

Minnesota’s paid family and medical leave law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, was now up for debate at the Capitol, where lawmakers are considering scaling back the benefit.

Feuer and his wife, Willa Brown, both 40, are expecting a baby boy in September. Until that moment, their plan had been for Feuer, who doesn’t get paid parental leave through his job, to take time at home under the state law after Brown exhausted her 12 weeks of employer-provided leave.

Suddenly, as they sat drinking their morning coffee, it seemed that might not be possible.

“We knew this law was coming. We were planning our life around it,” Feuer said. “And then to hear that suddenly this would get pulled away from us — and not just us, from thousands of families who this could be so essential for them to successfully raise a child — I was just so shocked.”

For Minnesotans like Feuer and Brown who are expecting a child or planning a pregnancy around statewide paid leave, it’s been a blow to watch lawmakers debate changes to a law they thought was a done deal. Legislative leaders are in negotiations over a variety of issues that could end up being hammered out in a special session as soon as next week.

The Legislature approved the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act and Gov. Tim Walz signed it into law in 2023, making Minnesota one of more than a dozen states where workers can take paid time off after the birth or adoption of a child, to care for a sick relative or in situations including a family member’s military deployment or cases of domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking.

With her second child due at the end of the year, 38-year-old Jen LeBlanc of Crosslake, Minn., was bracing for the same 12 weeks of unpaid leave she took when her son was born three years ago. Then her employer, which doesn’t offer paid leave, told her about the state law.

Anxiety became relief, and relief became anxiety when LeBlanc learned the program might not go into effect as planned. Going without pay during her maternity leave will be a stretch, she said, considering rising costs for essentials such as child care for her son, car insurance and food.

“My husband and I, we both work full-time, we both have good-paying jobs, but unfortunately with the state of the economy and rising prices with things, we have cut back and saved as much as we could,” LeBlanc said. “So then the idea of going down to one income ... it’ll just kind of be like, where can we cut back even more?”

While proponents argue a statewide paid leave policy will help employers recruit and retain workers, members of Minnesota’s business community have raised concerns about the cost to employers and a possible hit to productivity.

The bill, as passed two years ago, includes concessions for businesses: a later implementation date than initially proposed and 20 weeks of total leave instead of 24. Business leaders saw this session, with its closely divided House and Senate, as an opportunity to scale the policy back further.

A payroll tax, which employers can split with employees, will fund the paid leave program. Legislative leaders agreed at the end of the session to reduce the cap on that tax from 1.2% to 1.1%.

Employers can opt out of the state program and choose to offer the benefit through a private plan.

Rep. Dave Baker, R-Willmar, who sponsored an unsuccessful bill to delay the program a year, told reporters Saturday that “paid family medical leave is going to happen” — it’s just a question of the details.

“Our paid family medical leave is very generous, overly generous in Minnesota, and that’s going to be a real problem when the [payroll] taxes start next year,” Baker said. “There’s a lot of reasonable stuff happening here when it comes to right-sizing employment mandates without taking something away, without delaying it. We’ve got to get it right-sized, or this will not work.”

Baker said other changes are on the table, similar to exemptions for very small businesses the Senate approved this session to the state’s 2023 earned sick and safe time law.

“From our perspective, the discussions are ongoing,” said Sen. Judy Seeberger, DFL-Afton, who led the effort on small business exemptions. “We’re not done pushing for what we think is right when it comes to the business community in Minnesota.”

For now, state leaders continue to negotiate behind closed doors and families continue to wait for the outcome.

“Pregnancy is nine — really, nine-and-a-half months,” Brown said. “And so if you’re changing anything less than nine-and-a-half months out, you’re not changing theoretical plans. You’re changing every pregnant person in the state’s actual plan, and their actual financial reality of what they’re actually going to do, and how they’re going to be able to spend time with their kids, and how they’re going to be able to work.”

Allison Kite of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.