Data now available on LawAtlas.org describe details of state, county, and city earned sick leave laws across the 75 largest cities in effect as of July 1, 2022, through June 1, 2024. The data are a longitudinal version of the assessment developed and published by CityHealth, an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, with the Center for Public Health Law Research at the Temple University Beasley School of Law.
Each year since 2016, CityHealth has worked with partners to advance a package of evidence-based policy solutions aimed at improving health and well-being by collecting and assessing the policies in the largest U.S. cities. The Center for Public Health Law Research (CPHLR) works with CityHealth to assess nine of the 12 policy solutions each year, including earned sick leave, by researching, collecting, coding, and scoring the state, county, and city law involved in shaping each policy at the city level. Learn more about the CityHealth assessment methodology here.
“This partnership is an exceptional effort to help cities better identify and enact evidence-based policies that support public health and well-being. It’s also yielded a trove of longitudinal data that can be used to continue to understand and assess those policies and the nuances of their success,” said Elizabeth Platt, JD/MA, director of research and operations at the Center for Public Health Law Research. “By publishing these data, we provide researchers, advocates, policymakers and so many others a valuable resource for their quantitative work.”
“Earned sick leave is about fairness and health,” said Katrina Forrest, JD, executive director of CityHealth. “No one should have to choose between earning a paycheck and caring for themselves or a loved one. Ensuring that all workers have time to recover when they’re sick protects low-income workers and people of color who are least likely to have access to this benefit. These data provide an in-depth look at how cities and states are structuring these policies, providing a clearer view of where progress is happening and where more work is needed.”
Longitudinal data make it easier to spot trends or uncover the lack of movement in areas of the law that could benefit a community’s health.
Thirty-six of the cities included in the study have an earned sick leave law as of June 1, 2024.
As of June 1, 2024, 37 cities were explicitly preempted by state law from establishing an earned sick leave law. This is an increase from 33 cities as of July 1, 2022. Preemption is increasingly used as a tool by states to limit the authority of local-level governments.
The data describe not only whether the city has an earned sick leave or not, but also components of those laws that research has shown to be particularly beneficial, like whether an employee can use earned sick leave to care for family members and what type of family member (e.g., grandparents, parents, children, etc.), whether the employee can use earned sick leave for domestic violence recovery, the minimum amount of earned sick leave time an employee can earn, and the smallest business size covered under the law.
The data may be explored using an interactive table on LawAtlas.org and are available for free download.