New Prenatal Leave Law Benefits Pregnant Workers in New York
Episode 495 | Author: Emilie Aries
Pregnant workers in New York now receive paid time off for prenatal care.
You may have heard of paid family and medical leave, but how about paid prenatal leave?
As of January 1, 2025 pregnant workers in New York now have access to the first paid prenatal leave benefits in the nation! This groundbreaking benefit helps fill a gap that’s always existed for pregnant workers, whose family and medical leave benefits (if they’re lucky enough to have them) often don’t kick in until after baby arrives.
Who’s covered?
Now, private-sector pregnant workers in New York have access to 20 hours of paid leave for any and all appointments related to pregnancy. The benefit is provided in one lump sum as soon as it’s requested so that the worker can use their leave as needed over the following year. It applies to part- and full-time employees at companies of every size, and you’re eligible to access them immediately upon starting a new job.
This new leave is what’s known as a stand-alone benefit, meaning it cannot be combined with other kinds of paid time off (PTO), and you should not be forced to exhaust other leave options before accessing it.
Let’s break down some of the specifics. You might be the boss who wants to make sure you navigate this new legislation correctly or the employee seeking to understand your rights. Whether you’re in New York or not, there’s a lot to be learned from this groundbreaking action.
How to access paid prenatal leave
Because requesting paid prenatal benefits amounts to disclosing a pregnancy at work—an announcement that can come with a lot of fear of reprisal—it’s important for NY-based workers to know their rights.
First, let me be clear that any retaliation or discrimination due to pregnancy is illegal, federally, thanks to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. So, if you ask to access your new prenatal benefits and are met with any retaliation, document everything and get in touch with an employment lawyer or online resource like WorkplaceFairness.org or ABetterBalance.org.
It’s recommended that employers set up a system where employees can request access to paid prenatal benefits without having to go through their direct manager, to help mitigate bias and retaliation. Talk to your HR representative if you have one to learn more about how your organization is staying in compliance. Otherwise, if you need to go through your manager, know that they are prohibited from asking for proof of your pregnancy before granting you access to this new benefit.
Can paid prenatal leave become law nationwide?
This New York success story is an amazing leap forward in the realm of corporate wellness benefits, and one I’d love to see replicated nationwide. To understand how we get there, we first need to understand how this legislation was passed in Albany.
Interestingly, this new legislation passed as an amendment to the state budget bill, a critical piece of legislation every State House in our nation passes each year. I’d love to see this tactic replicated elsewhere.
This serves as a great example of why it’s so important to pay attention to what’s happening at the local level of government. If you’re frustrated by what’s happening on the national level, start by leveraging your power in your own backyard. Reach out to your state representatives and senators, point to this New York news, and ask what they’re doing to get these same promising, thoughtful motions passed at home.
Wherever you live, I want to hear from you on this! Do you have company benefits that kick in before baby is born? If not, how have those of you in your baby-making era, as I like to call it, navigated work benefits (or the lack thereof) around your pregnancies?
Weigh in via our Courage Community on Facebook or the group on LinkedIn to join the discussion!
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
Episode 414, New Rights for Pregnant Workers
Episode 311, How to Talk About Marital Status, Parental Status, and Pregnancy in the Interview
Episode 494, Matrescence and the Transformation of Motherhood
Find out more ways you can TAKE ACTION
toward better work benefits for all:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 495. I'm your host Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up and today I've got some really good news for women workers and families coming out of the state of New York. I don't know about you, but good news feels like it's coming at a premium these days. So I want to share some news you can use today.
As of January 1, 2025, New York State has enacted a new first of its kind benefit for pregnant workers, paid prenatal leave. Now you've already heard of paid family and medical leave or the Family and Medical Leave Act which is unpaid but a federal benefit to protect your job in the case of the arrival of a new child or caring for a sick loved one or caring for yourself in the case of illness. But these benefits are new and different.
This is the first time that a benefit specifically set aside for pregnant workers is offered in any state in our nation. So as of now, in New York State, all pregnant workers are entitled to 20 hours of paid leave which can be used to attend any kind of a appointment, or doctor's visit related to their pregnancy. Workers get that 20 hour benefit up front in one lump sum and it's good for any 52 week period. So if you become pregnant in March, you now are eligible with 20 hours available in one lump sum for your use for all prenatal care visits that exhausts in March of next year.
This applies to both part time and full time workers, regardless of the size of your company. The only caveat is that it doesn't apply to public sector employees, just private sector employees in the State of New York. Now this is an exciting new development that takes the Pregnant Workers and Fairness Act a step further. The Pregnant Workers and Fairness Act just went into effect back in 2023. I did a whole episode covering it, episode 414 which I will link to in today's show Notes featuring Sarah Brafman from A Better Balance that went into detail on how groundbreaking a benefit and federal protection that is for pregnant workers. But all those benefits which make it possible for pregnant workers to request reasonable accommodations does not include paid leave benefits. So Governor Kathy Hochul, when she signed this into law last year has really taken things to the next level by offering paid leave benefits for pregnant workers.
Now the HR leader in me also wants to share a few caveats, a few details here that employers really need to know. Because while this benefit is awesome for workers, it's really important employers know what they can and cannot do. So first and foremost, you cannot ask questions about why an employee is requesting to use prenatal leave. So if your employee requests access to their 20 hours of paid prenatal leave benefits, you can't ask them things like, oh, are you pregnant? How pregnant are you? How's your pregnancy going? Show me a doctor's note proving that you're pregnant. You cannot request that invasive information.
Which puts employees in a weird spot, right? Because you're essentially disclosing your pregnancy when you request access to these benefits. And yet the guidance coming out of New York State, especially from employment law lawyers and employment law firms, is that employers should really set up a way for employees to request these benefits without necessarily having to go directly through their manager to do so.
A couple other caveats that are interesting. You cannot require employees to accrue these benefits. This is a standalone lump sum amount of paid time off 20 hours needs to be delivered in one fell swoop. Your 20 hour prenatal leave bank needs to be full when requested, so you don't accrue this paid time off like other forms of vacation time or sick time. This is based off one lump sum amount that you should have access to right away. And this is important because you might need a lot more prenatal care in the beginning or towards the end of your pregnancy and you don't want to have to be like trickled out this benefit. This benefit should be made available in one lump sum.
Employers cannot require employees to exhaust other forms of PTO before accessing it. So they can't say, well, you can't use your prenatal leave benefits until you've used all your vacation days up. That's not allowed and it cannot be combined with other forms of PTO. So some states are allowing you to combine sick time with vacation time in one general PTO bucket. You can't do that with this prenatal leave benefit. This has to be separate standalone lump sum benefit.
And finally, as has been the law in the United States since the 1970’s, employers cannot discriminate or retaliate against you for being pregnant, or in this case, for accessing your prenatal leave benefits. So employees know your rights and please share this podcast and our corresponding blog post at bossedup.org/episode495 to raise awareness of these new benefits impacting workers in New York.
Now, one final detail I think is important to share is how this law came to be. Because as I was doing some digging about how this was passed, I was thinking to myself, how can we make sure to put pressure on state legislatures across the country to pass paid prenatal leave, just like the state of New York? And I was really surprised to learn that it wasn't a standalone piece of legislation that was included or introduced in the New York State House, but rather, this legislation came about via an amendment that was placed on the New York State budget.
So every year, state legislatures across the country and all 50 states, there's a committee devoted to passing the budget and creating the budget. These legislators work harder than any other state reps or state senators in the entire legislature because the budget is a huge endeavor. It decides how your state is going to spend taxpayer dollars, and that is a massive undertaking. So it's interesting to see that this was tacked onto a huge and important budget bill in the New York State House, as opposed to being introduced as a standalone piece of legislation to be voted on.
And truly, if anyone was involved in this, if anyone's listening who's, like, deep in the weeds of New York state politics, please call me. I want to learn more about why organizers made that choice or how the politics shook out around all that. I have a feeling it's because it's really hard to vote against a state budget. And so this is a great way to pass something that expands benefits as it is attached to a really important piece of legislation, the state budget. But I'd be curious to hear from organizers on the ground and those who are advocating for this in other states too.
Notably, there was another amendment that passed that went into effect already last year in the state of New York, which required employers to also offer paid lactation breaks. So the state of New York is doing right by pregnant workers and women employees this year, passing not only the first of its kind, paid prenatal leave, but also requiring employers to offer paid lactation breaks. Not just protected lactation breaks, but paid lactation breaks, which is amazing. And both of those passed as amendments attached to their state budget bill.
So what's the bottom line here? What's the lesson behind all of this? We have got to pay attention to what's happening on the local, especially when federal politics feels so chaotic, feels so out of our control. If you are sick and tired of calling your U.S. senators and House of Representatives, especially when federal politics feels so out of control and so out of our reach to actually influence, I want you to remember that you have more influence than you can imagine on your state senators and state representatives, and that a lot of good things can be passed in your state house this year.
So if you don't know them already, find out who is representing you, who's my state legislator, who's my state representative, and my state senator, and talk to them. Send them the details from this blog post or from this podcast today and ask them how they can help advocate for paid prenatal benefits and paid prenatal leave in your state in the year ahead. That is an area in which we can exert our control, exert our agency, and really make our voices heard.
If you'd like to learn more about how to take action on the issues that matter most to women in the workplace and that matter most to all kinds of working people and working families in this country, head to bossedup.org/takeaction to learn more. And in the meantime, I want to hear from you. Do you have benefits that include paid prenatal leave that's offered just voluntarily through your company? I want to hear about it. Or if you're like me and you've been having children recently, as I like to say, I'm in my baby making era. What has navigating the benefit structure at work looked like? Have you had benefits to even access? Because they're not a given in every state across this great nation.
And for all my listeners who are tuning in from abroad, please set the record straight and tell us what's going on in your neck of the woods. Because I know some of my European listeners were horrified to find out I only had four months of paid family and medical leave to access for my most recent maternity leave, which to me was extremely luxurious.
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
As far as American benefits go, let's keep the conversation going as always in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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