Paid Maternity Leave by State: Employer Guide
Which states have paid maternity leave, who pays, and what small businesses owe. An employer guide to state paid family leave programs and FMLA.
Paid Maternity Leave by State
Which states have it, who pays for it, and what employers, especially small ones, actually owe
The first thing to know about paid maternity leave by state is that the question hides a trap in its wording. The state programs that pay new parents are called paid family and medical leave, not maternity leave, and no federal law guarantees paid leave to private-sector workers at all. What actually exists is a patchwork: a federal unpaid-leave law that only covers larger employers, a growing set of state programs that pay part of an employee's wages during leave, and, everywhere else, whatever an employer chooses to offer. Whether a new parent gets paid time off depends almost entirely on which state they work in and who employs them.
For an employer, that patchwork is the whole challenge. If you have employees in one state, you have one set of rules to learn. If you have employees in several, you may face several different programs at once, each with its own contribution rate, coverage rules, and small-employer exemptions. And if you are under 50 employees, the federal law that anchors every explanation of this topic may not even apply to you, which changes the picture entirely.
This guide is written for the employer, and especially the small employer. It gives the short answer, explains the three layers of federal, state, and employer leave, lists which states currently pay benefits, compares them, breaks down who funds the contributions, and spends real time on the question most guides skip: what a business under 50 employees actually owes.
Coordinating Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) eligibility, state programs, and your own policy is a leave and absence management job that goes wrong when it lives in scattered spreadsheets, which is why I built FirstHR to keep employee records, signed policy acknowledgments, and leave paperwork in one place. State programs change often, so this is general information, not legal advice, and you should confirm the current status for your states.
The Short Answer
Twelve states and the District of Columbia run mandatory paid family and medical leave programs that pay benefits during leave, including leave for bonding with a new child. In the other 38 states no mandatory state program pays family leave benefits, and paid maternity leave generally exists only if the employer chooses to offer it. No federal law guarantees paid leave to private-sector workers; the main federal leave law, the FMLA, guarantees unpaid, job-protected time and applies only to employers with 50 or more employees.
For an employer, that resolves into three practical questions. First, do you have employees in a state with a paid leave program, and if so, what does it require you to contribute and administer? Second, does the federal FMLA apply to you, which depends on whether you have 50 or more employees? Third, in states with no program, what will you offer voluntarily? The rest of this guide answers each in turn.
Federal, State, and Employer: The Three Layers
Paid maternity leave in the United States is best understood as three stacked layers, because no single one covers the whole picture and employers routinely confuse them. Getting these straight is the foundation for everything else, since your obligations come from different layers depending on your size and location.
The federal layer is the FMLA, and its defining features are that it is unpaid and limited. It provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave, meaning the employee's job is protected while they are out, but it provides no wage replacement, and it applies only to employers with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius, for employees who have worked a year and at least 1,250 hours. For a small business under 50 employees, the FMLA imposes no leave obligation at all, which is the single most important fact for that audience.
The state layer is where paid leave actually lives. Twelve states plus the District of Columbia run paid family and medical leave programs that replace part of an employee's wages during qualifying leave, funded through payroll contributions. These programs often cover employers of any size, so unlike FMLA, being small does not exempt you. The employer layer sits on top: in states with no program, and as an enhancement on top of state programs, an employer can offer its own paid maternity or parental leave policy. In most of the country, that voluntary employer policy is the only paid option a new parent has.
What Unpaid Maternity Leave Involves
Unpaid maternity leave is the default across most of the country: the employee keeps her job and stops being paid. Where FMLA applies, that means up to 12 weeks away with the same or an equivalent role waiting at the end, and no wage replacement from any source unless a state program or your own policy supplies it.
The part employers miss is that unpaid does not mean untouched. Group health coverage has to continue on the same terms for the whole FMLA leave, so your share of the premium keeps going out while there is no paycheck left to deduct her share from. Settle in writing how she will cover her portion before the last check is issued.
Accrued paid time off is the other question that comes up immediately. You can let an employee use accrued PTO to turn unpaid weeks into paid ones, and under FMLA you can require it. Either choice is fine; what causes disputes is deciding it case by case, so put the rule in the policy and apply it the same way for everyone.
Which States Have Paid Maternity Leave
Paid family leave is the correct name for what people call maternity leave, and twelve states plus the District of Columbia pay those benefits today: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. The U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau counts thirteen states and the District with paid family and medical leave laws, because that count includes Maryland, whose program has not started paying.
Two more states have enacted programs that are not yet paying anyone. Maryland starts payroll contributions on January 1, 2027 and opens benefit claims in January 2028, no later than January 3. Virginia, the first Southern state to enact one, begins collecting on April 1, 2028 and paying on December 1, 2028.
Three of those programs are new enough that most payroll setups have only just caught up with them. Delaware and Minnesota began paying benefits on January 1, 2026, and Maine followed on May 1, 2026.
Collection started before benefits in two of the three. Delaware and Maine began taking payroll contributions on January 1, 2025, while Minnesota started collecting and paying on the same day, January 1, 2026. If you hired people in those states before collection began, the contribution lines on your payroll are newer than the employment relationship.
Colorado went further and became the first state in the country to write a dedicated neonatal provision into its program. Since January 1, 2026, parents of an infant receiving inpatient care have had up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave on top of the 12 weeks of bonding leave, for a combined 24 weeks tied to one birth. The direction across every program is toward more states and broader coverage.
State-by-State Comparison
The table below summarizes the active programs on the two dimensions that decide your administrative work: how long bonding leave runs, and who funds the contribution. Weeks are set by statute and the splits are adjusted by the administering agency, so confirm both against the state's own program page before you set payroll. The point of the table is the shape of the landscape, not a substitute for each state's official current numbers.
| State or district | Typical leave length | Funding source |
|---|---|---|
| California | Up to 8 weeks bonding, plus disability for recovery | Employee-funded |
| Colorado | 12 weeks bonding, plus 12 weeks neonatal care | Employer and employee |
| Connecticut | Up to 12 weeks | Employee-funded |
| Delaware | Up to 12 weeks parental (size rules apply) | Employer and employee |
| District of Columbia | Up to 12 weeks parental | Employer-funded |
| Maine | Up to 12 weeks | Employer and employee |
| Massachusetts | Up to 12 weeks family, 26 combined | Employer and employee |
| Minnesota | Up to 12 weeks family, 20 combined | Employer and employee |
| New Jersey | Up to 12 weeks, plus disability for recovery | Employee-funded |
| New York | Up to 12 weeks | Employee-funded |
| Oregon | Up to 12 weeks, 14 for pregnancy-related conditions | Employer and employee |
| Rhode Island | Up to 8 weeks bonding, plus disability | Employee-funded |
| Washington | Up to 12 weeks family, 16 combined | Employer and employee |
Reading across the table, a few patterns stand out. Twelve weeks of bonding leave is the common baseline, though California and Rhode Island stop at 8 weeks for bonding alone and several states allow more once medical leave is combined. The funding source splits roughly into employee-funded programs, a shared employer-and-employee model that most newer states use, and the employer-funded District of Columbia.
Several of the employee-funded states, California, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island, also mandate a separate state disability insurance benefit that covers the mother's medical recovery from childbirth, which stacks with bonding leave. Those coordination details are where administration gets real.
Who Pays for State Paid Family Leave
State paid family leave programs are funded through payroll contributions, but the question of who actually pays, the employer, the employee, or both, varies by state and directly affects your costs and payroll setup. There are three funding models, and knowing which applies in each of your states tells you both what you owe and what you must withhold.
The employee-funded model is the simplest for an employer's budget: you withhold the contribution from employee wages as a payroll deduction and remit it to the state, but you pay nothing yourself. The shared model, used by most newer programs, splits the contribution, so you both withhold the employee portion and pay an employer portion.
The employer-funded model, used by the District of Columbia, puts the full contribution on the employer through a payroll tax. In every case, the employer is the one responsible for withholding, remitting, and reporting, even where employees bear the cost.
Contribution rates give you a rough planning range. For 2026 the total rate is 0.88 percent of covered wages in Colorado, 0.5 percent from employees alone in Connecticut, and 1 percent split between employer and employee in Maine and Oregon. Small employers pay less than the full rate in several of those states.
Those rates are set as a percentage of wages and are adjusted, usually annually, by each state. Because they change and differ across states, there is no single number to memorize; the practical task is to confirm the current rate for each state where you have employees at the start of each year and set your payroll accordingly, alongside the rest of your state payroll taxes.
What matters structurally is that you know, for each state, whether you owe an employer share and how much to withhold from employees, and that leads directly to the question that matters most for a small business.
What Small Businesses Actually Owe
This is the section most guides skip, and it is the one that matters most if you have fewer than 50 employees. The rules for small businesses are genuinely different from the rules for large ones, and the differences cut in two directions: some obligations do not apply to you, while others apply regardless of your size. Getting this right is the difference between compliance and either overpaying or missing a real duty.
Start with the federal law, because its non-application is the good news for small employers. The FMLA covers only employers with 50 or more employees, so if you are under that threshold, FMLA imposes no leave obligation on you at all. You are not required to provide the 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave that larger employers must. For many small businesses, this means their entire leave picture is set by their state and their own choices, not by federal law.
The state picture is where small does not always mean exempt. Many state paid leave programs apply to employers of any size, including those with a single employee, so a small business in one of those states must participate in the program: withhold contributions, and pay the employer share if one applies.
A number of states soften this by exempting small employers, below a size threshold that varies by state, from the employer contribution share, while still requiring them to withhold and remit the employee portion. So a very small employer in such a state often pays nothing itself but still has the administrative job of deducting and remitting the employee contribution.
The takeaway for a small multi-state employer is to answer three questions per state: does the state have a program, does it cover an employer of my size, and am I exempt from the employer share but still on the hook for withholding? That per-state analysis is the real compliance work, and it does not reduce to a single national rule.
Those answers are worth writing down per state rather than holding in your head, because they differ by state, they are adjusted from year to year, and the withholding duty survives an exemption from the employer share. Our guide to paid family leave by state has a per-state setup sheet built for exactly that record.
The Majority of States Have No Mandate
In 38 states no mandatory paid family leave program pays benefits, which is most of the country. For employers there, paid leave is a matter of choice, with one narrow exception: Hawaii mandates temporary disability insurance, which pays a birth mother during her medical recovery but covers no bonding time. The federal FMLA may still require unpaid, job-protected leave if you have 50 or more employees, but nothing requires pay.
New Hampshire and Vermont take an intermediate step. Both run a voluntary paid family leave insurance plan that an employer can buy into, facilitated by the state rather than mandated, and a worker whose employer stays out can enroll in an individual plan in New Hampshire or Vermont. What the arrangement gives you there is a structured way to offer the benefit without building it yourself.
For most employers in most no-mandate states, though, the reality is straightforward. If you want your employees to have paid maternity leave, you offer it yourself, and the whole question moves from compliance to what you decide to fund.
Maternity Leave Laws in a State With No Program
In many no-program states the maternity leave laws come down to one federal statute plus whatever you write yourself. Indiana and Utah are ordinary examples: neither appears among the program states listed above, so an employer there owes unpaid FMLA leave once it reaches 50 employees, and below that no leave statute guarantees new parents time off.
A few no-program states add an unpaid leave rule of their own. Montana, for one, makes it unlawful for an employer of any size to refuse a pregnant employee a reasonable leave of absence, so read your own state's statute before assuming federal law is the whole answer.
Pregnancy accommodation rules are separate and reach smaller employers. The federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act covers employers with 15 or more employees, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lists leave to recover from childbirth among the accommodations it can require, unless the leave would cause undue hardship.
The practical consequence is that the answer becomes about you rather than about the state. Whatever paid time a new parent gets is what your own policy gives her, and there is no program to point her toward when she asks. That is why a written policy carries far more weight in these states than it does in California or New York, where the state answers most of the question for you.
This is not a reason to do nothing. Even where no law requires it, paid parental leave has become an increasingly expected and competitive benefit, and its absence is felt by candidates and employees. For a small business in a no-mandate state, a clear voluntary parental leave policy is often one of the higher-impact benefits you can offer relative to its cost, precisely because it signals real support at a moment that matters enormously to employees. How to write that policy is the last piece of the puzzle.
Coordinating State Leave With FMLA
For employers with 50 or more employees, the practical complexity is that FMLA and a state paid leave program often apply to the same leave at the same time, and they do different jobs. Understanding how they fit together prevents the common errors of double-counting leave or failing to run them concurrently.
The clean way to think about it is that FMLA protects the job while the state program provides the income. An eligible employee at a covered employer taking 12 weeks of bonding leave under FMLA is typically using FMLA job protection and receiving state wage-replacement benefits for the same 12 weeks, not 12 weeks of one followed by 12 of the other. Running them concurrently is standard and correct; treating them as additive would give far more leave than either law intends. California adds its own wrinkle, because a state job-protection statute sits alongside the federal one.
Where it gets more involved is when a mother's leave has two medical components. In states that mandate short-term disability, her recovery from childbirth may be covered by disability benefits, and her bonding time by the paid family leave benefit, with FMLA job protection spanning both.
A single leave can then have three interacting pieces, and getting the sequence and designations right requires careful tracking of dates, eligibility, and which benefit covers which period. This coordination is precisely where accurate records of tenure, hours, and leave dates stop being paperwork and become the thing that keeps you compliant.
The way to keep it straight is to lay one employee's leave out as a timeline before it starts and decide, period by period, which benefit is paying and what is running alongside it. Fill a copy in for each maternity leave you administer, and agree it with the employee before she goes out.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Period | First day | Last day | What pays during this period | Who files the claim, and by when | Employer top-up, if any | FMLA designated and running | PTO used or held | Health premium: who pays the employee share |
| 2 | Pregnancy-related absence before the birth | ||||||||
| 3 | Childbirth recovery, medically certified | ||||||||
| 4 | Bonding leave after recovery ends | ||||||||
| 5 | Any unpaid gap between benefits | ||||||||
| 6 | Return to work, phased or full | ||||||||
| 7 | |||||||||
| 8 |
Writing a Maternity Leave Policy
Whether you are in a state with a program or one without, you need a written maternity leave policy, because even where a state provides benefits, your own rules govern everything the state does not: how paid time coordinates, what you offer on top, and how the process works. A clear policy is what turns a confusing legal patchwork into a predictable experience for both the business and the employee. It also keeps you on the right side of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which requires that pregnancy-related conditions be treated no worse than any other temporary medical condition you accommodate.
A good policy answers a short list of questions plainly. How much leave is available, and how much of it is paid, whether by the state, by you, or by a combination? Who is eligible, and from what point?
The next questions are about coordination. How does the leave coordinate with any state program, with FMLA if you are covered, and with accrued paid time off, including whether PTO keeps accruing while someone is out on FMLA? How does pay work during the leave, including how a state benefit and any employer top-up fit together? And what is the process to request and return from leave? Answering these in writing, consistently applied, prevents most disputes.
Handling Maternity and Paternity Leave in One Policy
Write a single parental leave policy that covers both parents, then treat the medical piece separately. State bonding benefits are parent-neutral, and FMLA bonding leave is available to fathers and non-birthing parents on the same terms as to mothers, so a policy that splits by gender creates a difference the leave laws do not.
What genuinely differs is recovery. Childbirth recovery is a medical absence that belongs to the birthing parent alone and is covered by disability benefits in the states that mandate them. That is why a mother is often out longer than a father even where the bonding entitlement is identical, and the policy should say so plainly instead of leaving people to work it out from the totals.
The obligations on the other side of that split are worth reading separately, since they follow different rules: our guide to whether paternity leave is required covers what an employer owes a new father.
For a small business, the policy is also a competitive tool, and it belongs in the same conversation as the rest of your small business benefits package. In a no-mandate state, a defined paid parental leave benefit sets you apart from employers who offer nothing. In a program state, a policy that clearly explains the state benefit and adds a reasonable employer top-up signals that you have your act together and that you support new parents.
Either way, the policy should be consistent, applied the same way for everyone, and easy for a new hire to understand, ideally introduced during onboarding and written into the employee handbook so expectations are set from the start.
Frequently Asked Questions
What states have paid maternity leave?
There is no such thing as a dedicated maternity leave program; the correct term is paid family and medical leave, and bonding with a new child is one of the reasons it covers. Twelve states pay those benefits today, plus the District of Columbia: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. Delaware and Minnesota began paying on January 1, 2026 and Maine on May 1, 2026, which makes three of the twelve new arrivals. Maryland and Virginia have enacted programs of their own that pay nothing yet, with first claims due in January 2028 and December 2028. Everywhere else a new parent is generally paid only if her employer decides to pay her, and the list moves often enough to be worth confirming for each state you employ in.
Does the United States have federal paid maternity leave?
No. There is no federal law that requires private employers to provide paid maternity leave or paid family leave. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave, but only for employers with 50 or more employees and only for employees who meet tenure and hours requirements. For private-sector workers, paid leave after a birth comes from state programs and from voluntary employer policies. This means in most states, whether a new parent gets paid time off depends on their state and their employer, not federal law.
Do small businesses have to provide paid maternity leave?
It depends on the state. FMLA only reaches employers with 50 or more employees, so most small businesses owe no FMLA leave. State rules are different: a number of paid family leave programs cover employers of any size, even a business with a single employee, which means a small employer in one of those states must participate in the program. Some states excuse small employers from paying the employer share of the contribution, but the duty to withhold the employee share and send it to the state stays in place. In short, your answer comes from the state where each employee works, not from your headcount alone.
Who pays for state paid family leave?
State paid family leave programs are funded through payroll contributions, but who pays varies by state. Some programs are funded entirely by employee contributions, which the employer withholds and remits but does not add to. Most newer programs split the contribution between employer and employee. The District of Columbia is the single program funded entirely by an employer payroll tax, at 0.75 percent of covered wages. Many states also exempt small employers from the employer share. Because rates and splits change annually, confirm the current contribution rate for each state where you have employees.
How much paid maternity leave do state programs provide?
Most state programs provide up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for bonding with a new child, though the California and Rhode Island bonding benefits run 8 weeks, and several states allow more once medical leave for the pregnancy and recovery is added. Wage replacement is usually a sliding scale that pays a larger share to lower earners, up to a weekly maximum: Minnesota replaces 90 percent of the lowest band of wages and 55 percent of the highest, Delaware pays 80 percent capped at $900 a week, and New York pays a flat 67 percent. Colorado was the first state to add up to 12 weeks of neonatal care leave for parents of an infant in intensive care. The weeks, the formula, and the cap are all adjusted over time, so confirm the current figures for the state your employee works in.
What is the difference between FMLA and state paid family leave?
FMLA is federal, unpaid, and provides job protection: up to 12 weeks off with your job protected, but no pay, and only at employers with 50 or more employees. State paid family leave programs are state-level, paid, and replace part of wages during leave, often covering employers of any size. The two can run at the same time: an eligible employee may receive FMLA job protection and state wage-replacement benefits concurrently. FMLA protects the job; the state program provides the income. In states with no program, only FMLA or an employer policy applies.
Is short-term disability the same as paid maternity leave?
Not exactly, but it is related. Five states mandate temporary disability insurance: California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. It replaces part of an employee's wages during the period they are medically unable to work, including recovery from childbirth. In those states, short-term disability covers the mother's medical recovery, while a separate paid family leave benefit covers bonding time. Short-term disability does not cover a non-birthing parent's bonding leave. So in some states, a new mother's paid time off comes from two coordinated sources: disability for recovery and family leave for bonding.
How should an employer handle maternity leave in a state with no program?
In the majority of states, where no mandatory paid family leave program pays benefits, paid maternity leave is largely up to the employer. Best practice is to write a clear parental leave policy that states how much paid time off is offered, who is eligible, how it coordinates with any accrued PTO and with FMLA if you have 50 or more employees, and how pay works during leave. Even without a mandate, offering paid parental leave is an increasingly expected and competitive benefit. A written, consistently applied policy prevents disputes and signals that the business supports new parents.