Minnesota earned sick and safe time covers your family, and an attendance point charged for using it is unlawful by name

One hour for every thirty

Minnesota’s earned sick and safe time law took effect January 1, 2024, and the arithmetic in it is short. Minn. Stat. § 181.9446(a):

An employee accrues a minimum of one hour of earned sick and safe time for every 30 hours worked up to a maximum of 48 hours of earned sick and safe time in a year. Employees may not accrue more than 48 hours of earned sick and safe time in a year unless the employer agrees to a higher amount.

Paragraph (d) starts the clock at the beginning of the job — “Earned sick and safe time under this section begins to accrue at the commencement of employment of the employee” — and paragraph (e) is one line: “Employees may use earned sick and safe time as it is accrued.” There is no waiting period in the section.

Unused hours do not evaporate on December 31. Paragraph (b)(1):

Except as provided in clause (2), employers must permit an employee to carry over accrued but unused sick and safe time into the following year. The total amount of accrued but unused earned sick and safe time for an employee must not exceed 80 hours at any time, unless an employer agrees to a higher amount.

Clause (2) gives the employer a way out of carryover, and the price is fixed: front-load 48 hours at the start of the year if the employer pays out unused time at the end of the prior year at the employee’s base rate, or front-load 80 hours if it does not. An employer that neither carries over nor front-loads at one of those two numbers has not satisfied the section.

Salaried employees exempt from federal overtime are handled in paragraph (c) — they are “deemed to work 40 hours in each workweek for purposes of accruing earned sick and safe time,” unless the normal workweek is shorter, in which case accrual follows the shorter week.

The leave is paid, at what § 181.9445, subd. 4a, calls the “base rate”:

(1) for employees paid on an hourly basis, the same rate received per hour of work;

(2) for employees paid on an hourly basis who receive multiple hourly rates, the rate the employee would have been paid for the period of time in which leave was taken;

(3) for employees paid on a salary basis, the same rate guaranteed to the employee as if the employee had not taken the leave; and

(4) for employees paid solely on a commission, piecework, or any basis other than hourly or salary, a rate no less than the applicable local, state, or federal minimum wage, whichever is greater.

The same subdivision then removes a list of items from that calculation — “commissions; shift differentials that are in addition to an hourly rate; premium payments for overtime work; premium payments for work on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, or scheduled days off; bonuses; or gratuities as defined by section 177.23.”

Who is covered is defined in § 181.9445, subd. 5: “any person who is employed by an employer, including temporary and part-time employees, who is anticipated by the employer to perform work for at least 80 hours in a year for that employer in Minnesota.” Four categories are excluded, and the first is the one that swallows the most people — “an independent contractor.” Whether you actually are one is a separate question with its own statute; see misclassified as a contractor.

Employer, under subd. 6, “means a person who has one or more employees.” There is no small-business floor.

What you can use it for

The list is in § 181.9447, subd. 1, and reading it is worth more than any summary of it:

An employee may use accrued earned sick and safe time for:

(1) an employee’s:

(i) mental or physical illness, injury, or other health condition;

(ii) need for medical diagnosis, care, or treatment of a mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition;

(iii) need for preventive medical or health care; or

(iv) need to make arrangements for or attend funeral services or a memorial, or address financial or legal matters that arise after the death of a family member;

(2) care of a family member:

(i) with a mental or physical illness, injury, or other health condition;

(ii) who needs medical diagnosis, care, or treatment of a mental or physical illness, injury, or other health condition; or

(iii) who needs preventive medical or health care;

(3) absence due to domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking of the employee or employee’s family member, provided the absence is to:

(i) seek medical attention related to physical or psychological injury or disability caused by domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking;

(ii) obtain services from a victim services organization;

(iii) obtain psychological or other counseling;

(iv) seek relocation or take steps to secure an existing home due to domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking; or

(v) seek legal advice or take legal action, including preparing for or participating in any civil or criminal legal proceeding related to or resulting from domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking;

(4) closure of the employee’s place of business due to weather or other public emergency or an employee’s need to care for a family member whose school or place of care has been closed due to weather or other public emergency;

(5) the employee’s inability to work or telework because the employee is: (i) prohibited from working by the employer due to health concerns related to the potential transmission of a communicable illness related to a public emergency; or (ii) seeking or awaiting the results of a diagnostic test for, or a medical diagnosis of, a communicable disease related to a public emergency and such employee has been exposed to a communicable disease or the employee’s employer has requested a test or diagnosis; and

(6) when it has been determined by the health authorities having jurisdiction or by a health care professional that the presence of the employee or family member of the employee in the community would jeopardize the health of others because of the exposure of the employee or family member of the employee to a communicable disease, whether or not the employee or family member has actually contracted the communicable disease.

Clause (1)(iv) is easy to miss and covers a common situation: the paperwork and the funeral after a death in the family. Clause (4) covers a snow day at a child’s school. And the “safe time” half of the statute’s name is clause (3) — the leave is not only for illness.

“Family member” is defined at § 181.9445, subd. 7, and the definition is wider than most employer handbooks assume. It reaches a child, foster child, adult child, legal ward, or child to whom the employee stands or stood in loco parentis; a spouse or registered domestic partner; a sibling, stepsibling, or foster sibling; a biological, adoptive, or foster parent or stepparent; a grandchild or stepgrandchild; a grandparent or stepgrandparent; “a child of a sibling of the employee”; “a sibling of the parents of the employee”; and a child-in-law or sibling-in-law. Clause (2) then adds every one of those relatives of a spouse or registered domestic partner. Clause (3) reaches “any other individual related by blood or whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.” Clause (4) allows “up to one individual annually designated by the employee.”

There is one narrow exception to the list, added in 2024. Section 181.9447, subd. 12, can withhold the clause (4) weather-and-emergency use from firefighters, licensed peace officers, 911 telecommunicators, correctional facility guards, and public employees holding a commercial driver’s license. All three of its conditions have to be met. The employee’s “preassigned or foreseeable work duties during a public emergency or weather event would require the employee to respond”; the employee holds one of those positions; and either the employee is represented and the collective bargaining agreement “explicitly references section 181.9447, subdivision 1, clause (4), and clearly and unambiguously waives application of that section for the employee’s position,” or the employee is unrepresented, “is needed for the employer to maintain minimum staffing requirements,” and the employer has a written policy “explicitly referencing section 181.9447, subdivision 1, clause (4)” provided in a manner meeting the subd. 9 notice requirements. The waiver language is required of the bargaining agreement; the written-policy branch requires an explicit reference and proper delivery, and the subdivision asks nothing more of it.

Notice, and how much of it an employer can demand

Section 181.9447, subd. 2, caps advance notice at seven days:

If the need for use is foreseeable, an employer may require advance notice of the intention to use earned sick and safe time but must not require more than seven days’ advance notice. If the need is unforeseeable, an employer may require an employee to give notice of the need for earned sick and safe time as reasonably required by the employer.

The unforeseeable-need standard is new. Until the 2025 amendment the sentence read “as soon as practicable”; Laws 2025, 1st Spec. Sess., ch. 6, art. 5, § 10, struck those words and inserted “reasonably required by the employer.” That change moved the standard toward the employer, and it is the operative text today.

An employer that wants to enforce a notice requirement has to write it down. The same subdivision requires the employer to “have a written policy containing reasonable procedures for employees to provide notice” and to “provide a written copy of such policy to employees,” and then supplies the consequence: “If a copy of the written policy has not been provided to an employee, an employer shall not deny the use of earned sick and safe time to the employee on that basis.”

Documentation

Subdivision 3(a) sets the trigger:

When an employee uses earned sick and safe time for more than two consecutive scheduled work days, an employer may require reasonable documentation that the earned sick and safe time is covered by subdivision 1.

Two days, not three — the same 2025 act tightened this one against employees as well, striking “three” and inserting “two” (Laws 2025, 1st Spec. Sess., ch. 6, art. 5, § 11). A single absent day, or two, carries no documentation obligation at all.

What counts as reasonable documentation is defined rather than left to the employer. For illness and communicable-disease uses, subd. 3(b) accepts “a signed statement by a health care professional,” and then provides that if the employee or family member did not see one, or if documentation “cannot be obtained from a health care professional in a reasonable time or without added expense,” reasonable documentation “may include a written statement from the employee.” For domestic abuse, sexual assault, and stalking, subd. 3(c) requires the employer to accept “a court record or documentation signed by a volunteer or employee of a victims services organization, an attorney, a police officer, or an antiviolence counselor,” with the same fallback to the employee’s own statement.

Two more paragraphs matter and are rarely quoted. Subdivision 3(e): an employer “must not require disclosure of details relating to domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking or the details of an employee’s or an employee’s family member’s medical condition as related to an employee’s request to use earned sick and safe time under this section.” Subdivision 3(f): written statements “may be written in the employee’s first language and need not be notarized or in any particular format.”

Subdivision 11 then makes what the employer does learn confidential. Health and medical information, information about domestic abuse or sexual assault or stalking, the fact that leave was requested, and any documentation the employee supplied are all covered: “the employer must treat such information as confidential.” It may be disclosed only where “the disclosure is requested or consented to by the employee, when ordered by a court or administrative agency, or when otherwise required by federal or state law.” Paragraph (b) requires those records to be kept “as confidential medical records separate from the usual personnel files.”

What the employer may not do

Subdivision 4 forecloses the most common workaround: “An employer may not require, as a condition of an employee using earned sick and safe time, that the employee seek or find a replacement worker to cover the hours the employee uses as earned sick and safe time.” The 2025 act added a sentence preserving voluntary shift trades.

Subdivision 5 limits how the time is charged. Leave “may be used in the same increment of time for which employees are paid,” an employer is not required to grant it in increments smaller than 15 minutes, and an employer cannot force use “in more than four-hour increments” — so a two-hour medical appointment cannot be billed against the balance as half a day.

Subdivision 6 is the enforcement spine. Paragraph (a):

An employer shall not discharge, discipline, penalize, interfere with, threaten, restrain, coerce, or otherwise retaliate or discriminate against a person because the person has exercised or attempted to exercise rights protected under this act, including but not limited to because the person requested earned sick and safe time, used earned sick and safe time, requested a statement of accrued sick and safe time, informed any person of his or her potential rights under sections 181.9445 to 181.9448, made a complaint or filed an action to enforce a right to earned sick and safe time under this section, or is or was participating in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this chapter.

Paragraph (b) names the specific practice most employees encounter:

It shall be unlawful for an employer’s absence control policy or attendance point system to count earned sick and safe time taken under sections 181.9445 to 181.9448 as an absence that may lead to or result in retaliation or any other adverse action.

Paragraph (c) makes it unlawful to report or threaten to report a person’s or a family member’s actual or suspected citizenship or immigration status for exercising rights under the sections. Paragraph (d) removes the magic-words problem: “A person need not explicitly refer to sections 181.9445 to 181.9448 or the rights enumerated herein to be protected from retaliation.”

The statement you are supposed to get every pay period

Section 181.9447, subd. 10(b), requires a running balance:

At the end of each pay period, the employer shall provide, in writing or electronically, information stating the employee’s current amount of:

(1) the total number of earned sick and safe time hours available to the employee for use under section 181.9446; and

(2) the total number of earned sick and safe time hours used during the pay period under section 181.9447.

The employer may pick “a reasonable system” for delivering it — on or attached to the earnings statement, or through an electronic system, in which case the employer must give access to an employer-owned computer during working hours to review and print. Subdivision 10(c) lets an employee inspect the underlying records, and subd. 10(d) requires them to be kept three years.

This requirement moved, which is why citations to it are often wrong. Laws 2023, ch. 53, art. 12, § 1, originally wrote the two earned sick and safe time lines into the earnings statement itself, at § 181.032(b)(5) and (6). Laws 2024, ch. 127, art. 11, § 4, struck both clauses from § 181.032 and renumbered the paragraph around them, and art. 11, § 12, of the same act inserted the requirement into § 181.9447, subd. 10, as new paragraph (b). Section 181.032 today lists twelve items for the earnings statement and earned sick and safe time is not among them. Section 181.032 still bears on the leave in a different place: paragraph (d)(3) requires the written notice given at the start of employment to state “paid vacation, sick time, or other paid time-off accruals and terms of use.”

Remedies

Two doors, and they are not the same door.

The private action is § 181.944:

In addition to any other remedies provided by law, a person injured by a violation of sections 181.172, paragraph (a) or (d), 181.939 to 181.943, and 181.9445 to 181.9448 may bring a civil action to recover any and all damages recoverable at law, together with costs and disbursements, including reasonable attorney’s fees, and may receive injunctive and other equitable relief as determined by a court.

The administrative door is § 177.27. Subdivision 4 authorizes the commissioner of labor and industry to issue a compliance order for a long list of sections that includes “181.9445 to 181.9448.” Subdivision 7 then makes part of the consequence mandatory: on a finding of violation and an order to comply, “the commissioner shall order the employer to pay to the aggrieved parties back pay, gratuities, and compensatory damages, less any amount actually paid to the aggrieved parties by the employer, and for an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” A repeated or willful violator faces “an additional civil penalty of up to $10,000 for each violation for each employee.”

One boundary is worth stating precisely, because the two chapters sit next to each other and get blurred. The private action in § 177.27, subd. 8, with its automatic equal-amount liquidated damages and its mandatory fee award under subd. 10, reaches “sections 177.21 to 177.44 and 181.165.” The earned sick and safe time sections are not in that range. The private route for this leave is § 181.944, where costs and reasonable attorney’s fees are recoverable but the doubling in § 177.27, subd. 8, is not part of the text.

Notice obligations run alongside. Subdivision 9 requires the employer to tell all employees they are entitled to the leave, in what amount, on what accrual year, on what terms, with a copy of the notice policy, and to say that retaliation is prohibited and that the employee may file a complaint or bring a civil action. That notice must be supplied “in English and the primary language of the employee, as identified by the employee,” and an employer that provides a handbook “must include in the handbook notice of employee rights and remedies under this section.”

What the 2024 and 2025 legislatures changed

The revisor’s History lines set the frame. Section 181.9445: “2023 c 53 art 12 s 4; 2024 c 127 art 11 s 5-7.” Section 181.9446: “2023 c 53 art 12 s 5; 2024 c 127 art 11 s 8.” Section 181.9447: “2023 c 53 art 12 s 6; 2024 c 127 art 11 s 9-14; 1Sp2025 c 6 art 5 s 10-12.” Section 181.9448: “2023 c 53 art 12 s 7; 2024 c 127 art 11 s 15-17; 1Sp2025 c 6 art 5 s 13.”

The 2024 act was largely definitional cleanup that helped employees: it wrote the “base rate” definition into § 181.9445, subd. 4a, added the funeral-and-estate use, and relocated the per-pay-period balance statement into the leave statute itself.

The 2025 act cut the other way twice, and saying otherwise would misdescribe the law. It replaced the unforeseeable-notice standard “as soon as practicable” with “as reasonably required by the employer,” and it lowered the documentation trigger from more than three consecutive scheduled work days to more than two. Both changes give employers more room than they had in 2024. The same act also added the voluntary-shift-trade sentence to subd. 4 and, in § 181.9448, subd. 1(j), spelled out how an employer may advance leave before it is accrued and what it owes if the advance falls short of actual accrual — that section carries its own clause, “This section is effective January 1, 2026.” Sections 10 through 12, amending § 181.9447, carry no separate effective-date clause; whichever default date applies, the amended text is the text in force now and is what the revisor publishes.

Checked against the revisor’s table of Minnesota Statutes affected by the 2026 Regular Session, queried one exact section at a time, none of §§ 181.9445, 181.9446, 181.9447, 181.9448, 181.944, 181.032, or 177.27 was amended, new, or repealed in 2026. Everything quoted above is current.

A search of Minnesota appellate decisions on CourtListener for opinions construing the earned sick and safe time sections turns up none. The statute is young enough that the appellate courts have not yet said what its harder phrases mean, and this page does not guess at them.

This page describes the machinery. Whether a particular absence falls inside subdivision 1, whether a particular relative is a “family member,” and whether an employer’s paid-time-off policy already satisfies § 181.9448 are questions about facts and documents, and applying these sections to them is not what this page does.