Upcoming Changes to the Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave Act
The Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave Act (PFMLA) will undergo changes in 2026 that will affect both employees and employers. These changes will go into effect on January 1, 2026, and work to expand protections to more employees but may also reduce protections previously offered by the Act.
The most major change to the PFMLA will be the expansion of job protection to employees of smaller businesses. The job protection provisions of the PFMLA entitle eligible employees to return to their same, or equivalent, position upon return from leave. As it stands, only employers with 50 or more employees are required to provide that job protection to their employees under the PFMLA. However, in 2026, employers with 25 or more employees will be required to provide job protection to employees who take leave. That number will be reduced to 15 or more employees in 2027, and 8 or more employees in 2028.
Although the PFLMA will protect a larger population of employees beginning in 2026, the period of employment protection will be reduced in certain cases. Under the current iteration of the PFMLA, paid leave must be taken currently with unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Therefore, employees who elect to take paid leave will exhaust their paid leave benefits and unpaid leave benefits concurrently. However, an employee may elect to first take 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the FLMA, followed by 12 weeks of paid leave under the PFMLA, which amounts to a total of 24 weeks of protected medical leave. In response to this practice, the legislature has revised the PFMLA to provide up to 12 weeks of employment protection, whether the employee takes only 12 weeks of paid leave, or stacks their leave by first taking 12 weeks of unpaid leave followed by 12 weeks of paid leave.
The PFMLA offers job security and financial security to a broad range of Washington workers. Once the changes to the PFLMA come into effect, eligibility for protection under the PFMLA will expand exponentially. However, the changes may also reduce protection under the Act. For those reasons, employees should consider the upcoming changes to the Act in planning their medical leave.