SC law extends paid parental leave to temporary workers, ensures time off for stillbirths

COLUMBIA — About a month before Liyun Zhang was due to give birth to her son, she got in a serious car crash that sent her to the hospital until late into the night.

The next day, Zhang went back to work with bruises still on her belly. She didn’t want to call in sick because, as a grant-funded researcher for the University of South Carolina, Zhang had no paid parental leave under state law, meaning every day of paid time off she used was a day she wouldn’t get to spend with her newborn.

“That was not a smart decision, now that I think about it,” Zhang told the Daily Gazette. “I should have taken some days off. I was just so driven by, ‘I need leave.’”

Under legislation Gov. Henry McMaster signed Tuesday, full-time employees like her will qualify for up to six weeks of paid parental leave.

The new law, which takes effect Oct. 1, further expands on the state’s first paid leave law passed in 2022, which provided employees of state agencies and colleges paid time off whether they give birth, adopt or foster a child. A year later, the Legislature also made K-12 public school employees eligible.

Newly eligible starting this fall are employees who are temporary or whose position is funded by a grant.

The new law also clarifies that women whose babies are stillborn are still entitled to their six weeks of paid leave. And it doubles paid leave for the parent who doesn’t give birth — or, in cases of adoption or fostering, the parent who’s not the primary caregiver — from two weeks to four.

The intent is to help families “during both moments of joy and moments of unimaginable loss,” Sen. Darrell Jackson, the proposal’s lead sponsor, said in a statement. Both the House and Senate gave unanimous approval.

“When we invest in parents during one of the most important moments in their lives, we strengthen families, improve employee retention and make state government a better place to work,” said Jackson, D-Hopkins.

How many people the change might affect is unclear, since it depends on the number who plan to take parental leave. In 2024, 958 state employees used their paid leave benefits for the birth or adoption of a child, according to an analysis by the Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.

Temporary and grant-funded workers

For Zhang, now 39, guaranteed parental leave would have meant a lot less stress during a pregnancy already considered high-risk.

Knowing her position as a researcher for the university’s Children’s Law Center didn’t come with maternity leave, Zhang saved vacation days for years so she could spend three months at home with her newborn son when he was born in June 2024, she said.

Every day she took off for doctor appointments was another day she couldn’t use for her maternity leave. She and her husband skipped vacations out of fear Zhang might need those days down the line.

“I had to be very careful to calculate, to see how much time I had,” she said.

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Zhang watched as colleagues employed directly through the university took time off before their baby’s arrival for anniversary trips and so-called babymoons, which are short trips meant to give new parents quality time before their baby is born. Under the 2022 law, covered employees don’t have to use up their accrued vacation and sick days for parental leave.

“I was very, very happy for them, but at the same time, I wish I had those luxuries, too,” Zhang said.

Unpaid leave was an option.

A 1993 federal law guarantees parents up to 12 unpaid weeks off.

But Zhang and her husband worried about the financial toll of going without her salary for weeks. Having a baby is expensive, and Zhang wanted to save up as much as possible, especially after undergoing pricey in-vitro fertilization treatments, she said.

Before the law passed, Zhang and her husband worried about how they might handle time off if they had another child, which they both want. Zhang wasn’t sure how she’d save up enough vacation time again, since she used up years of saved time after the birth of her first child.

“It was hard for us to even think about future children, even though we want more,” Zhang said. “The price of that is, if you want to have more children, you just need to do leave without pay, and that’s all stress, too.”

Although time off won’t be the determining factor, it does make the planning much easier, she said.

As does the additional two weeks guaranteed for her husband, since he also works for the university. If Zhang does have another child, she won’t have to scrutinize every sick day and vacation to make sure she has enough time to spend at home with her newborn, she said.

“I’m just feeling so grateful and so hopeful for myself and for other people now that it won’t be so stressful,” Zhang said. “We can have a little peace of mind.”

Stillbirths

It took Mariah Kinnie more than a month after giving birth to realize she could use her paid maternity leave.

Kinnie’s second son, Jennings, was stillborn in October 2024. The middle school social worker in Beaufort took about a month off work, unpaid, to recover and grieve.

Even though she didn’t get to take her son home, Kinnie still went through the physically taxing process of giving birth, she said.

“It wasn’t just like nothing happened,” Kinnie, whose first child is 4, told the SC Daily Gazette.

About a month after she came back, a member of her grief support group asked why she didn’t use her paid parental leave. Curious, Kinnie asked her school district, which acknowledged she should have gotten that time and offered her the full six weeks.

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District officials were very supportive once Kinnie raised the issue, she said. But because stillbirths weren’t mentioned in the law, neither Kinnie nor her bosses realized she qualified at first.

“There wasn’t any clarification for anybody,” she said.

In an interpretation of the law, the state attorney general’s office wrote last year that it does apply to stillbirths. Though not legally binding, the office’s opinion is a prediction of how a court might interpret the law.

At least three school districts, including Kinnie’s, denied teachers paid time off following stillbirths because the law didn’t explicitly state that, said Rep. Neal Collins, the sponsor of the 2023 law expanding paid leave to teachers, in a letter asking for the opinion.

The bill passed this year will further clarify that point, ensuring districts know immediately to approve paid leave for teachers who experience a stillbirth, Collins said this week. Two of the districts, which Collins declined to name, later offered the teachers paid leave.

“As with everything, I’m excited about the progress we made,” he told the SC Daily Gazette.

His biggest disappointment, he said, was that the bill didn’t also double the paid time off from six weeks to 12. The House added that in its version, but the Senate took it out.

In situations like hers, Kinnie said, it’s hard enough without adding legal ambiguity. Many grieving parents might not think to ask if they can still take their paid leave or want to jump through bureaucratic hurdles right after losing a child, she said.

The first few weeks after Kinnie’s son died were a blur, she said. Whether her benefits were correct was far from her mind.

“That’s the last thing anybody should be thinking about,” the 34-year-old said.

Kinnie ultimately opted not to take the full six weeks. By the time she knew to raise the legal question, she was already back at work and reestablished in her routine, she said. The district instead recouped the unpaid time she took off.

Once the new law is in effect, she hopes parents will no longer have to deal with questions over their leave after the trauma of giving birth and losing a child, she said.

“It’s one less stress that a grieving parent has to experience,” Kinnie said.