Changes to New Jersey Family Leave Act Every New Jersey Employee Should Know About

As of July 17, 2026, the New Jersey Family Leave Act (“NJFLA”) just got better.

Under the NJFLA, eligible employees are legally entitled to take 12 weeks of job-protected leave in a 24-month period to care for a new child in your family or a seriously sick family member. While previously only employees who worked for employers with 30 or more employees worldwide were entitled to take New Jersey Family Leave, the recent amendments cut that number in half. So now, employees are entitled to family leave as long as their employers employed at least 15 employees worldwide during 20 or more workweeks in the current or immediately preceding calendar year. That means that many more New Jersey employees working for small employers will now be entitled to job-protected family leave under the NJFLA.

But those are not the only changes! For example, prior to the current changes employees seeking to take NJFLA leave were required to have worked for their employer for at least 12 months and have worked at least 1,000 hours during that period of time. Now, however, employees are entitled to leave if they worked at least 3 months and worked 250 hours during the past 12 months. This change means that relatively newly hired employees and many more part-time employees will be entitled to family leave if they need it.

The NJFLA always provided for job-protected leave – meaning that employees returning from NJFLA leave were entitled to be returned to the same or a substantially similar position. The recent amendments expand that protection by making clear that covered individuals taking temporary disability benefits (TDB) or family temporary disability leave benefits (known as family leave insurance (FLI)) are also entitled to be returned to their same or substantially similar positions in terms of seniority, status, employment benefits, pay, and other terms and conditions of employment even if they are not eligible for NJFLA leave. Also, employees returning from leave must be treated the same as other employees for purposes of any layoff or recall system, including those under union collective bargaining agreements.

The last amendment to the NJFLA provides that employees who are eligible for both earned sick leave and either temporary disability benefits or family leave insurance benefits have the option of either using the earned sick leave or temporary disability/family leave insurance benefits and may choose the order in which the different types of leave are taken although employees cannot take more than one kind of paid leave simultaneously during any period of time.

For more information about the FLA, please visit FLA Basics | New Jersey Employment Law Lawyers Lenzo & Reis, LLC

You can find the NJLA amendments here.