Take It or Leave It

Winter's snow hasn't stopped yet, but 2024 is already proving to be a busy year for the paid family and medical leave landscape at the federal level. U.S. House and Senate members on both sides of the aisle continue to shine a national spotlight on the need to expand access to paid leave – and with that, comes opportunity for progress.

To make sense of the recent developments, host Josh Seidman sits down with Jason Kanter, the government and regulatory affairs executive from IBM and a leading expert on workforce policy and labor and employment issues, for the first episode in Take It or Leave It’s two-part mini-series on federal paid leave. Together, Josh and Jason comb through all things related to paid leave including its vital role in the lives of workers and their families during times of need, how employer-provided paid leave is a key part of providing access, and challenges that workers, states, and employers face in terms of fairness, navigation, and portability.

They discuss promising recent bipartisan progress in Congress, including activity from the U.S. House Paid Family Leave Working Group, a bicameral request for information on potential federal paid leave setups, and momentum for a new legislative proposal called the “Interstate Paid Leave Action Network (I-PLAN)” to improve the coordination and harmonization of paid leave benefits across the growing number of states with their own programs.

2023 saw unprecedented change in the Leave Law landscape, with multiple states and localities enacting new leave laws and others rolling out major amendments that upended existing mandates. In this episode, host Josh Seidman looks back at the hottest developments from the last 12 months, and ahead to what leave activity may be lurking as we turn the corner to 2024.

The episode begins with a 2023 wrap-up that walks listeners through federal changes, such as welcoming in the Pregnant Workers’ Fairness Act, paid family leave changes, including the official rollout of Oregon and Colorado’s programs, and paid sick leave and paid time off law changes, like Illinois’ new paid “any reason” leave law. After touching on Congressional paid leave activity in both the House of Representatives and Senate, including the release of a bicameral, bipartisan Request for Information on federal paid leave proposals, and some of the leave laws that sunset in 2023, Josh looks ahead to the new year and forecasts where federal paid leave, state paid family leave, and state paid sick leave and paid time off may wander in 2024. Join us for this quick-hitting review of where we’ve been in 2023, and what we’re keeping a close eye on as we take on 2024.

New Year’s 2024 is just around the corner, and with it comes a host of major new Paid Leave Law programs launching across the country. Perhaps most important is Colorado’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance (“FAMLI”) program, which officially begins providing benefits on January 1st. For an in depth look at this comprehensive and influential new program – the latest in a growing patchwork of state paid family medical leave laws – host Josh Seidman sits down with Tracy Marshall, director of the Colorado Family & Medical Leave Insurance Division.

Together, Josh and Tracy discuss the history of the program and hit the highlights including who is covered, the amount and nature of covered leave, application processes, and program funding. They answer key questions about coordination of benefits with employer policies and other leave laws, applying for and administering private plans, how Colorado FAMLI stacks up against existing state paid family medical leave programs, and practical considerations and general best practices for employers. Join Josh and Tracy as they dive deep into this important new program and forecast how it may impact future federal legislation.

The many layers of the leave law world can sometimes feel, well endless. In this important episode of Take it or Leave It, we explore one specific layer of family and medical leave – disability and family leave as classes of insurance – that differs from but is interconnected with the paid family and medical leave mandates proliferating around the country (i.e., in Oregon with the Paid Leave Oregon program beginning in September 2023, in Colorado with the Colorado FAMLI program coming online in January 2024, and so forth).

To help navigate what disability insurance and family leave insurance are and what these offerings entail, host Joshua Seidman sits down with Cindy Goff, Vice President, Supplemental Benefits and Group Insurance at American Council of Life Insurers (or ACLI). Together, they explore the scope of and differences between disability and family leave insurance, the dynamics of how these offerings are structured and how they compare to paid family and medical leave mandates, recent activity in the space, and how these classes of insurance can impact potential future federal paid family and medical leave.

10 years ago to the day, we published our first “If Pain, Yes Gain” paid sick leave article. Over the last decade, this article series has grown to more than 110 parts, tracking the frequently evolving and constantly complicated web of paid sick leave mandates. Today, the country is filled with a myriad of paid sick leave laws of different types, durations, and criteria, and the changes show no signs of stopping. In this episode host and principal “If Pain, Yes Gain” author, Josh Seidman, sits down with Marlin Duro-Martinez, a fellow leave expert and key contributor to the series, to discuss the sweeping changes they’ve seen since the article series started. They chart the evolution of paid sick leave laws at the federal, state and local level, analyze where we are now, and discuss some of the major challenges these laws create for multi-state and nationwide employers.

Effects of strong paid leave policies can be hard to quantify. Luckily, there’s an organization attempting to do just that, asking questions to examine how non-working “prime age” individuals really feel about paid family and medical leave, and where it ranks in their workplace priorities. To break this all down, host Josh Seidman is joined by Ben Gitis, Associate Director for Economic Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who helped author and publish a report exploring the impact more robust paid leave and flexible work policies would have on Americans who are currently out of work. Join Josh and Ben as they explore the results of recent polling on the role of paid leave in helping non-working Americans overcome caregiving and health-related barriers to rejoining the labor market, the current status of state paid family and medical leave programs, and updates on federal paid family leave activity.

On this episode of the Take It or Leave It Podcast, Seyfarth attorneys Josh Seidman and Debbie Caplan discuss the new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and its implications on employers and employees alike. Join them as they highlight details about this new accommodation mandate for pregnant individuals, how it overlaps with and differs from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), open questions under the PWFA, and practical considerations for employers during the early stages of the PWFA.

When Take It or Leave It first launched in 2021, our first topic was religious accommodations for the Covid vaccine. The Supreme Court's decision in Groff v. DeJoy has brought religious accommodations back into the forefront and so, once again, host Joshua Seidman sits down with expert Dawn Solowey to discuss what Groff means for employers in the workplace religious accommodations space. Together, they chat about what Groff held, what has changed and what has not, and practical guidance for employers in handling religious accommodations post-Groff. Join Joshua and Dawn for a valuable conversation about what employers need to do to remain in compliance with the new “substantial additional costs” accommodations standard.

Paid leave laws continue to evolve and expand in states and localities across the country. The country’s many paid leave patchworks continue to blossom, including in the spaces of mandatory and voluntary paid family leave, paid sick leave, paid “any reason” leave and many others. As in prior years, 2023 has continued a recent legislative trend where numerous paid leave bills are introduced, a number of them receive consideration and votes in state legislatures, and a few ultimately make their way across the finish line to enactment and becoming new law.

During this episode of “Take It or Leave It,” co-host Josh Seidman is joined by Dillon Clair, Director of State Advocacy and Litigation with the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), to learn more about how paid leave legislative activity has fared during the first half of 2023. The discussion covers a wide scope of topics, including new paid family and medical leave and paid sick leave mandates in Minnesota, how new state programs have deviated from and expanded upon predecessor state programs, what employers should be on the lookout for in terms of new laws and other legislative developments in the paid leave space later this year, and where things stand on federal paid leave proposals and prospects.

In honor of Memorial Day and Military Appreciation Month, this Take It or Leave It episode discusses the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA) and nuances and recent developments in the military leave space with guest speaker Brad Kelley, Chief Counsel to U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Commissioner Keith E. Sonderling.