BENEFITS DIGEST

Littler works through the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania ordinance that requires employer-funded paid parental leave and expands the county’s paid sick leave. The parental mandate covers employers with at least 15 employees and provides 12 weeks of paid leave subject to a $4,200 weekly cap, with the [county’s regulation](https://www.alleghenycounty.us/files/assets/county/v/1/government/health/documents/paid-sick-leave/article-xxiv-paid-sick-and-parental-leave.pdf) separating the effective date, at least 180 days after passage, from an employer implementation deadline up to 180 days after that. On the sick-leave side, the firm describes accrual of one hour per 30 hours worked, with annual caps rising to 72 hours at larger employers and 48 at smaller ones.

Babst Calland urges Allegheny County employers to start now on the policies, payroll changes and recordkeeping that the county’s new paid parental leave mandate and expanded sick leave will demand. On timing, the county’s [regulation](https://www.alleghenycounty.us/files/assets/county/v/1/government/health/documents/paid-sick-leave/article-xxiv-paid-sick-and-parental-leave.pdf) sets an effective date at least 180 days after passage and then gives employers up to another 180 days to come into compliance, so the obligations arrive in stages rather than on a single day.

Kathryn Moody’s weekly roundup leads with the collision between disability-accommodation law and paid-time-off policies, pointing readers to the publication’s fuller treatment of when leave itself becomes the accommodation. The rest of the week’s sweep runs from Allegheny County’s new paid-leave mandate to AI-generated busywork, mental health benefits and changes to how the federal employment-discrimination agency handles settlement talks.

A Northwell Health nurse alleges the hospital forced her onto leave rather than continue the lifting and standing accommodations she had been working under, consuming paid time off she wanted to preserve for childbirth recovery and caring for her baby. The hospital’s quoted correspondence invokes safety, essential nursing duties and the absence of transitional work, explanations she disputes. Her complaint brings pregnancy, disability and retaliation claims, and by its account she remains employed. The allegations, which haven’t been tested, show why accommodation and leave decisions need coordination rather than substitution.

Nelson Mullins explains California’s revised restrictions on agreements requiring workers to repay bonuses, training costs or other amounts when they leave. AB 1697, signed September 30, moves the restrictions to contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2027. It also expands exceptions for qualifying bonuses, government-funded recruitment and retention programs, advanced paid time off and certain financial-services affiliation payments. Each exception has conditions, so employers should review repayment terms in offer letters, bonus agreements and benefit policies before using them.

HR Dive examines whether leave provided as a disability accommodation must preserve an employee’s accrued paid time off, drawing on [Kingsolver v. U.S. Attorney General](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/kingsolver-v-us-attorney-general-ca11-opinion-2026-08-20.pdf), the Eleventh Circuit’s published August decision applying ADA standards under the Rehabilitation Act. The court held that flexible use of roughly 240 hours of accrued paid leave was itself a reasonable accommodation, that nothing about the employee’s disability required unpaid leave on top of it, and that an employee is entitled to a reasonable accommodation, not the accommodation of her choice. The practical checklist runs to written policies, past practice, and the interactive process. The holding is case-specific, not a universal rule that employers may always require PTO exhaustion.

Bricker Graydon Wyatt explains how a policy that lets employees choose between cashing out PTO and keeping it can trigger constructive receipt, taxing employees on leave they retained because they could have taken cash. The firm points to IRS rulings allowing employees to make an irrevocable cash-out election before the year they earn the leave. Those rulings apply only to the taxpayers who requested them, so they do not give every employer blanket approval for that approach. State law also constrains some designs. The distinction that matters is between elective cash-outs, which raise the issue, and automatic ones, which generally do not.

Covington’s roundup leads with New York’s personnel-records law taking effect November 8, which gives employers five business days to provide copies, requires retention for three years after employment ends, and adds a 10-day notice when negative information goes into a file. New York City’s rules add 32 hours of unpaid sick leave to the existing 40 or 56 paid hours plus 20 hours of prenatal leave, under a final implementing rule issued July 23. Severance, job-posting, employment-waiver and AI-reporting bills still await the governor and are not yet obligations.

California has revised its restrictions on stay-or-pay provisions, the contract terms that make a departing worker repay a bonus, tuition, training, relocation help or advanced leave. Governor Newsom signed AB 1697 on September 30, postponing compliance until January 1, 2027 and softening several edges of last year’s AB 692. Retention and relocation bonuses no longer have to be agreed at the start of employment to qualify for an exception, employers may recoup advanced paid time off up to 40 hours, and the exceptions for grant-funded bonuses and for tuition agreements covering transferable credentials both got wider. Jackson Lewis’s Susan Groff and Rachel Szela walk through the details. Employers with California workers should inventory every agreement that conditions money on staying, and complete the review before January 1, 2027.

Lush Cosmetics extended 26 weeks of paid parental leave to full-time U.S. and Canadian retail, manufacturing, and support workers with a year of service, matching its U.K. policy and covering birthing, nonbirthing, and adoptive parents. Only 14 percent of U.S. retail workers have access to paid parental leave, which makes the move unusual for the sector. The company sees longer leave as a way to keep experienced employees. Its workforce is 66 percent women, it promotes heavily from within, and its U.K. stores learned in the 2010s that short leaves produced returns followed by quick departures.

A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction voting leave survey ahead of the November 3 election. Counting the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico: 23 jurisdictions require some form of paid time off to vote, seven require time off without specifying pay, and 22 states impose no requirement. There's no general federal requirement that private employers provide voting leave. The details are where employers trip: 19 states excuse time off when polls are open outside work hours, 16 require advance notice from the employee, and California and New York require a posted notice at least 10 days before the election.

Airlines for America is challenging Colorado's Healthy Families and Workplaces Act as applied to flight and ground crews at five member airlines, arguing the federal Airline Deregulation Act preempts it and that it unconstitutionally burdens interstate commerce. Chief Judge Daniel Domenico denied the state's summary judgment motion on both claims. He wrote that the state makes a persuasive case under the governing law, as he also said at the pleading stage, but the record is now a duel between experts: the airlines' expert found that as employee sick rates rise, flight delays and cancellations rise too, while the state's expert says the evidence doesn't show the law measurably changed airline services at all. Weighing expert credibility is a trial job, not a summary judgment one. The sick leave law has covered employees working in Colorado, airline crews included, since July 2020; what a factfinder must now decide is whether its effect on airline operations is tenuous or significant.

Election Day is November 3, and 28 states plus the District of Columbia require time off to vote, paid in some states and unpaid in others, with early voting starting mid-October in many of them. The variation is the trap for multistate employers: Colorado now mandates up to two hours of paid leave on any day polling centers are open, Maryland requires two paid hours only when an employee lacks two consecutive off-duty hours while polls are open, and California bars employers from asking employees to bring mail ballots to work. Several states add posting requirements and advance-request rules, and some extend leave to employees serving as election officials. The practical moves are handbook supplements by state, manager training on how to handle requests, and staffing plans for operations that run around the clock.

KFF's updated fact sheet gathers the paid-leave patchwork in one place: 82 percent of workers had employer-provided paid sick leave in 2025, but only 27 percent had paid family leave at last measure, and just 56 percent of the workforce is even eligible for unpaid FMLA leave. Eighteen states plus D.C. and 18 localities now mandate paid sick leave, while 14 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave programs, Virginia this year becoming the first southern state to enact one. Durations run 6 to 52 weeks for a worker's own condition and 8 to 12 for family care, with wage replacement from 50 to 100 percent under varying caps and eligibility rules. For multistate employers the map is the point, and it is moving in both directions at once: D.C.'s benefit cuts take effect Thursday, and the Pittsburgh area votes today on a new parental leave mandate.

The county that includes Pittsburgh votes Monday on a scaled-back version of its paid parental leave mandate. After more than 1,500 comments, the Board of Health cut the proposed leave from 18 weeks to 12, capped the weekly benefit at $4,200, and narrowed coverage from all employers to those with 15 or more employees. Full-time employees would qualify after 180 continuous days. The revision also adds stillbirth as a qualifying event, lets FMLA leave run concurrently, and would raise the county's separate paid sick leave accrual to one hour per 30 worked, up to 72 hours a year. If the Board approves on September 28, the measure still needs the county council and the county executive.

A Gallagher consultant's case that the leave expansion of the last five years is due for a disciplined second look. More than 45 percent of employers now offer parental leave per a Gallagher survey, 13 states run paid programs of roughly 12 weeks, and some organizations have begun trimming durations and PTO banks under cost pressure. The argued sweet spot is four to 12 weeks of bonding time, aligned with the state programs so employer plans supplement rather than duplicate them. The adjustments offered are concrete, from one-year eligibility periods to leave taken in predictable blocks rather than intermittently, all grounded in utilization data before anything gets cut.

The alert uses Ohio's Senate Bill 396, which would create a state paid family and medical leave insurance program, to restate the multi-state math. Fourteen states plus D.C. already run mandatory programs, Maryland contributions start in January 2027 with benefits in 2028, and obligations generally follow work location, so a single remote hire in a PFML state can pull an employer in. It also flags the recurring mistake: assuming an existing PTO policy satisfies a state program that actually works like unemployment insurance with its own contributions and notices.

Greenberg Traurig recaps New York City's amended safe and sick leave rules, under city guidance issued July 23 following February's legislative changes. Employers must front load 32 hours of unpaid leave for nearly all employees, provide 20 hours of paid prenatal leave running on 52 week cycles rather than calendar years, and keep substantially expanded records, including prior policy versions and per pay period balance tracking. Penalties start at $500 per employee per instance and escalate from there.

What employers should know about key developments this week: • Severance Agreement Overhaul: The No Severance Ultimatums Act, awaiting Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature, would remove the current age-based restriction, extend a 21-day review period plus a seven-day revocation period to all employees.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger recently signed into law paid sick leave (PSL) entitlements for nearly all employees working in the Commonwealth. The law will have a staggered effective date, with the earliest changes taking effect in mid-2027.

What employers should know about key developments this week: Severance Agreement Overhaul: The No Severance Ultimatums Act, awaiting Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature.

Local governments often lead on workplace issues like paid sick leave, discrimination, and pay equity.

After public comments and hearing, the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has adopted amendments to the rules implementing the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA), which was established by Chapter 8 of Title 20 of the New York City Administrative Code.

The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) has adopted final rules implementing the City’s February 2026 amendments to the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act, now referred to in the rules as the Protected Time Off Law (PTOL). The rules went into effect July 23, 2026.

New York City's final rules under the amended Earned Safe and Sick Time Act take effect July 23, formalizing the Protected Time Off label and folding in Local Law 145's additional authorized uses and immediately-available-hours requirement. Employers with New York City staff should have handbooks and accrual settings updated now.

On May 13, 2026, the Allegheny County Health Department’s Board of Health voted to approve a significant amendment to the County’s existing Paid Sick Leave rules. The proposed amendment would add a new paid parental leave requirement while also expanding existing sick leave obligations

The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (“DCWP”) passed final amended Rules relating to the Protected Time Off Law (“PTOL”) (formally known as the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (“ESSTA”))

Miller Johnson employment attorneys Rebecca Strauss and Sarah Willey dig into one of the most talked-about benefits in today’s workplace: unlimited PTO. While these policies sound appealing, and can

Virginia recently enacted two new paid leave laws – one requires covered employers to provide paid sick leave, and the other creates paid family and medical leave. Although these laws do not go into

Through leave donation programs, employees are able to donate unused time off, such as vacation or PTO, to colleagues in need.