GOP states embrace paid parental leave for teachers

More Republican-led states are giving paid parental leave to public school teachers and other state employees, signaling a broader acceptance of family-friendly workplace policies once championed primarily by Democrats.

“All of these red states, I think we’re late to the party,” said South Carolina state Rep. Beth Bernstein, a Democrat who sponsored a bill this year to increase state employees’ paid parental leave from six to 12 weeks. It passed the majority-Republican South Carolina House in April with strong bipartisan support.

This year, Alabama, Iowa and Mississippi joined 37 other states in granting paid parental leave to thousands of state workers. The trend has gathered steam in recent years. Some experts link it to the cascade of state abortion bans that followed the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which dismantled the federal right to abortion.

Under fire from critics to do more to care for babies once they’re born, at least a dozen conservative-led states with abortion bans have since granted or expanded paid parental leave for their state employees.

But others say the increasing bipartisan support for measures that help working parents is also a reaction to economic realities. “What we’ve seen, especially in more conservative states, is the public sector has experienced a lot of turnover,” said Kameron Dawson, legal director of the Southern Office of A Better Balance, a legal organization focused on workplace rights. “They’re looking for tools to recruit younger employees.” Paid parental leave is the time off granted to workers for the birth or adoption of a baby, to care for a child, or to recover from a stillbirth or miscarriage. Without it, employees are left to cobble together their sick leave and vacation leave — or go unpaid — to stay home with a child and heal.

Alabama Republican state Rep. Ginny Shaver watched her daughter, a public school teacher, struggle to get the leave she needed after the births of her children in recent years. “With her second, she had complications in her pregnancy and used up her [paid vacation and sick] leave before she even had the baby,” Shaver told Stateline. Her daughter contracted COVID-19, and the baby had to spend time in neonatal intensive care. “It was a very difficult time, and she had to take unpaid leave.” Last year, Shaver and Democratic state Sen. Vivian Figures worked to win approval of a paid parental leave bill for state employees. It failed. But they tried again this year. With the support of Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, the state legislature — which has a Republican supermajority — passed it nearly unanimously. The new law gives female state employees, including teachers, eight weeks of paid parental leave in connection with birth, stillbirth or miscarriage, and gives male employees two weeks. Adoptive parents get eight weeks for one parent and two for the other. Shaver said she thinks the law passed thanks to vocal support from the governor and increased awareness of the issue due to the work she and Figures did in previous sessions.

“And the fact that all of the southeast states around us offered it,” Shaver said. “We’re trying to attract and retain state employees and teachers, and we’re in competition with everyone around us, and the private sector as well.”

For many Republicans, the workforce development argument for paid leave is a persuasive one. For states such as Alabama and South Carolina that have some of the lowest workforce participation rates in the nation, paid leave can be a tool to keep more people — particularly women — working. And it can be a way to retain educators as many states struggle with teacher shortages in K-12 schools. “For several years we’ve seen state legislatures acknowledging the importance of child care to businesses and the economy,” said Feroza Freeland, policy director at the Southern Office of A Better Balance. “But in the last few years, we’ve seen a growing recognition that paid leave is another piece of that puzzle.” States have taken up the issue because the federal government has not. The United States is a global outlier; among 38 peer nations, it’s the only one that doesn’t mandate paid parental leave, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. The group comprises 38 democracies with market-based economies. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993 and extended in 2020, only requires public agencies and companies with at least 50 employees to give up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for parents of newborns or newly adopted children, or caregivers of sick family members.

During his first term, President Donald Trump publicly supported some forms of paid family leave and signed a defense bill that gives 12 weeks of paid parental leave to most federal employees. Paid family leave was a signature issue for his daughter Ivanka Trump, at the time a senior adviser to the president. She even held a paid leave and child care summit at the White House in late 2019. That set the stage for other Republicans to take up the issue more publicly. And after the Dobbs decision, family-friendly policies have increasingly become conservative talking points in states with restrictive abortion laws. After the Mississippi House unanimously passed a paid parental leave bill earlier this year, Republican House Speaker Jason White celebrated the bill as a reflection of Mississippi’s status as a “ pro-life state.” In a recent post on X announcing her signing of a new paid parental leave law, Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds called Iowa “a pro-family state.” North Carolina was one of the first Southern states to grant paid parental leave to state workers in 2019 when then-Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed an executive order. In 2023, several months after the Dobbs decision, the state’s majority-Republican legislature extended paid parental leave to public school employees by tacking it onto a law banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun signed an executive order in March to add up to eight additional weeks of paid leave for “childbirth recovery” to the state’s existing four weeks of paid parental leave.

The new laws won’t apply to most residents, because they only cover state employees. But they could have a downstream effect. Shaver, the Alabama lawmaker, said she hopes her state’s new law will not only help the state be competitive with the private sector, but also set a precedent for other employers to follow. “I hope they will see it’s in their benefit to offer what they can,” she said. “It may not be eight or 12 weeks, but even offering a reduced or flexible work schedule can help families.”

Just over a quarter of private-sector workers have access to paid family leave through their employer as of March 2023, according the most recent data from the US Department of Labor. Among the lowest-wage earners, that share drops to 6%. State paid leave programs run the gamut in terms of what they offer. While Alabama’s new law offers up to eight weeks of leave for all state employees, including teachers, Mississippi’s offers six and does not require public schools to offer paid parental leave to their employees.