Family and Medical Leave in DC

Family and Medical Leave in DC: Two Laws, Two Different Jobs

DC has two separate leave laws that are easy to conflate but serve genuinely different purposes: the Universal Paid Leave Act, which pays you, and the DC Family and Medical Leave Act (DCFMLA), which only protects your job. See our Family and Medical Leave overview and federal FMLA page.

The Universal Paid Leave Act: Actual Wage Replacement

The Universal Paid Leave Act (UPLA), administered as DC Paid Family Leave through the Department of Employment Services, is what actually pays you during leave. It covers:

Up to 12 workweeks of parental leave to bond with a new child, including through adoption or foster care
Up to 12 workweeks of family leave to care for a family member with a serious health condition
Up to 12 workweeks of medical leave for your own serious health condition
Up to 2 workweeks of prenatal leave

How Much You Actually Get Paid

The wage replacement formula is tiered: you receive 90% of your average weekly wage on the portion of your earnings up to 1.5 times DC’s minimum wage, and 50% of your wages above that threshold — with an overall maximum benefit of $1,000 per week regardless of how much you earn. Your average weekly wage is calculated based on your earnings across all DC employers over roughly the preceding 15 months, not just your current job.

Who's Eligible — A Notably Low Bar

This is one of the most important practical differences between DC’s two leave laws. To qualify for Universal Paid Leave benefits, you generally just need to have worked for a covered DC employer at some point during the preceding 52 weeks, and spend at least 50% of your working time in DC. There’s no minimum employer size (it covers employers of any size) and no requirement that you’ve worked a specific number of hours or a minimum length of time — part-time employees are covered too. This is a dramatically lower bar than DCFMLA’s eligibility requirements, described below.

The DC Family and Medical Leave Act: Job Protection, Not Pay

DCFMLA is DC’s own version of the federal FMLA — it guarantees your job is protected while you’re on leave, but it doesn’t pay you anything on its own. Its structure is actually somewhat more generous than the federal law’s in one specific way: rather than a single combined 12-week bucket covering everything, DCFMLA provides up to 16 workweeks of family leave and up to 16 workweeks of medical leave separately, within a 24-month period — potentially up to 32 weeks of total job-protected leave if you need both categories.

Eligibility for DCFMLA is meaningfully stricter than for Universal Paid Leave: you need to have worked for your employer for at least 12 months and at least 1,000 hours in the preceding year (notably fewer hours than the federal FMLA’s 1,250-hour threshold, but still a real bar many part-time and newer employees won’t clear). DCFMLA also only applies to employers with 20 or more employees, unlike Universal Paid Leave’s coverage of employers of any size.

How the Two DC Laws (and Federal FMLA) Work Together

If the same leave event qualifies under more than one of these laws — Universal Paid Leave, DCFMLA, and federal FMLA — the leave runs concurrently, not additively. In other words, you don’t get to stack 12 weeks of paid leave plus 16 weeks of DCFMLA plus 12 weeks of federal FMLA for the same medical event; the overlapping portions are used up at the same time. This is a common point of confusion, and it’s worth understanding clearly: being eligible for multiple leave laws for the same situation generally extends your total protected time only to the extent one law’s entitlement is longer than another’s, not by adding all of them together.

A practical illustration: if you qualify for both Universal Paid Leave and DCFMLA for your own serious health condition, you could receive 12 weeks of wage replacement through Universal Paid Leave while that same 12 weeks also counts against your 16-week DCFMLA medical leave entitlement — leaving you with 4 additional weeks of unpaid, job-protected DCFMLA leave beyond what Universal Paid Leave covers, rather than a full second 16-week allotment.

Notice Requirements

For foreseeable Universal Paid Leave benefits, you generally need to provide at least 10 days’ notice to your employer. If the need for leave arises as an emergency, notify your employer as soon as possible instead.

Retaliation Protection and Enforcement

Retaliating against you for requesting, applying for, or using Universal Paid Leave benefits — including termination, demotion, a shift in your duties, or any adverse change to your pay or status — is unlawful, and complaints about this kind of retaliation or interference are handled by the DC Office of Human Rights. Benefit eligibility determinations and appeals, by contrast, go through the Office of Paid Family Leave and the Office of Administrative Hearings — a different process from a retaliation complaint.

Talk to a DC Family and Medical Leave Attorney

Whether you’re trying to figure out which of DC’s leave laws actually applies to your situation, believe you were wrongly denied benefits, or faced retaliation for requesting leave, Wilkenfeld Law Office can help you sort through it.

Or call 301.245.3035 · Intake@WilkenfeldLO.com

This article provides general information and is not legal advice. Contacting us does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Reviewed by Ari Wilkenfeld, Esq. (DC Bar No. 461063; MD Bar No. 9806240300). Ari has over 27 years of experience litigating in federal and state courts, and before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and various arbitration panels. Ari has been recognized by Esquire Magazine as “a famously determined Civil Rights lawyer” and by the New York Post as “a high powered DC Lawyer.” Last updated: August 28, 2026.