House committee reviews H.461 to expand unpaid family, parental and safe leave

The House Committee on General Advancing on a March hearing considered H.461, a bill that would expand access to unpaid leave for workers by adding bereavement leave, safe leave and qualifying exigency leave and by broadening the statute's definitions of family, domestic partner and in loco parentis.

Committee members heard from Sophie Sodapny of the Office of Legislative Council, who outlined the bill's changes and how they differ from a prior draft (H.33). Sodapny said H.461 would align Vermont's statute with more inclusive definitions so LGBTQ+ families, low-income workers and people in nontraditional family arrangements could access caregiving leave without undue burden.

Under the bill text presented to the committee, bereavement leave would cover the death of an expanded category of family members and must be taken within one year of the family member's death. Safe leave — to be used by employees who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking — would be available for up to 12 weeks a year and would cover activities such as seeking medical care, counseling, safety planning, relocation, securing housing and attending related legal proceedings when the employee is not the perpetrator. The bill also incorporates qualifying-exigency leave tied to federal regulations (29 CFR §825.126) for family members of active-duty service members; that federal regulation lists covered events such as short-notice deployment, military events, child-care arrangements and post-deployment activities.

H.461 expands the definitions of "child" and "parent" to include persons for whom an employee stood in loco parentis or who receive caregiving similar to a parent-child relationship; it also adds a standalone definition of domestic partner that lists factors such as an enduring relationship, co-residence for at least six months, mutual responsibility for welfare, an age minimum and that neither person be married to or in a domestic partnership with another person. A committee member asked whether that domestic-partner definition aligns with existing definitions elsewhere in Vermont law; Sodapny said she had not done a side-by-side comparison with Title 12 but expected similar language to exist in other statutes and offered to follow up.

The bill text presented distinguishes covered-employer thresholds by leave type. For parental leave, bereavement leave, safe leave and qualifying-exigency leave, a covered employer is defined as one that employs 10 or more individuals who work an average of at least 30 hours per week; for family leave purposes the covered-employer threshold remains 15 or more such employees. Covered-employee eligibility remains unchanged in the draft shown to the committee: an employee must have been continuously employed by the same employer for one year and average at least 30 hours per week to qualify.

Sodapny noted that H.461 removes a reporting requirement that had appeared in a prior draft (H.33) and trims some of the broader "family language" that was in that earlier version. She also reminded the committee that Vermont's Parental and Family Leave Act provides protections beyond the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, allowing the state statute to be more expansive than federal law.

The portion of the hearing in the provided transcript did not include a committee vote or other formal action on H.461.