A Minnesota employer with one employee owes pregnancy accommodations and 12 weeks of parenting leave — and FMLA leave can be counted against those 12 weeks

There is no size floor, and there is no waiting period

The most common thing a pregnant Minnesota employee is told is that the leave laws are for big companies. That belief comes from the federal statute, and it does not describe Minnesota’s.

Minn. Stat. § 181.940, subd. 3, the definition that governs §§ 181.940 to 181.944:

“Employer” means a person or entity that employs one or more employees and includes an individual, corporation, partnership, association, business, trust, nonprofit organization, group of persons, state, county, town, city, school district, or other governmental subdivision.

Section 181.939, subd. 2(e), the definition that governs the pregnancy accommodation duty, says the same thing in fewer words: “employer” means “a person or entity that employs one or more employees and includes the state and its political subdivisions.”

The eligibility side is just as short. Section 181.940, subd. 2, defines “employee” as “a person who performs services for hire for an employer from whom a leave is requested under sections 181.940 to 181.944,” and then: “Employee includes all individuals employed by the employer but does not include an independent contractor.” No months of service. No hours threshold. No part-time exclusion. The only category the definition removes is the independent contractor, and whether you actually are one is a separate question with its own statute — see misclassified as a contractor.

The accommodation duty

Section 181.939, subd. 2(a), in full:

An employer must provide reasonable accommodations to an employee for health conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth upon request, with the advice of a licensed health care provider or certified doula, unless the employer demonstrates that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the employer’s business. A pregnant employee shall not be required to obtain the advice of a licensed health care provider or certified doula, nor may an employer claim undue hardship for the following accommodations: (1) more frequent or longer restroom, food, and water breaks; (2) seating; and (3) limits on lifting over 20 pounds. The employee and employer shall engage in an interactive process with respect to an employee’s request for a reasonable accommodation. Reasonable accommodation may include but is not limited to temporary transfer to a less strenuous or hazardous position, temporary leave of absence, modification in work schedule or job assignments, seating, more frequent or longer break periods, and limits to heavy lifting. Notwithstanding any other provision of this subdivision, an employer shall not be required to create a new or additional position in order to accommodate an employee pursuant to this subdivision and shall not be required to discharge an employee, transfer another employee with greater seniority, or promote an employee.

Three things in that paragraph are worth reading twice.

The advice may come from a licensed health care provider or from a doula — the subdivision names both, in the alternative, on the terms the quoted text above states.

For three accommodations — more frequent or longer restroom, food, and water breaks; seating; and limits on lifting over 20 pounds — the subdivision removes both of the employer’s usual answers at once. No advice from a provider or doula may be required, and undue hardship may not be claimed. A demand for a doctor’s note before a pregnant employee may sit down is not a defense under this subdivision; it is a request the statute says cannot be made.

And the outer boundary is stated too. The employer is not required to create a new position, discharge an employee, transfer a more senior employee, or promote anyone. That is what the section refuses to require, and this page does not read it more broadly than it is written.

Three shorter paragraphs of the same subdivision matter as much:

• Paragraph (c): “An employer shall not require an employee to take a leave or accept an accommodation.” The choice belongs to the employee in both directions.
• Paragraph (d): the employer “shall not discharge, discipline, penalize, interfere with, threaten, restrain, coerce, or otherwise retaliate or discriminate against an employee for asserting rights or remedies under this subdivision.”
• Paragraph (f): during any leave under the subdivision, the employer “must maintain coverage under any group insurance policy, group subscriber contract, or health care plan for the employee and any dependents as if the employee was not on leave,” with the employee still paying the employee share.

Paragraph (b) is a savings clause: nothing in the subdivision “shall be construed to affect any other provision of law relating to sex discrimination or pregnancy or in any way diminish the coverage of pregnancy, childbirth, or health conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth under any other provisions of any other law.” Discrimination claims under the Minnesota Human Rights Act run on their own track and their own clock — see discrimination claims are lost on the calendar.

Lactation breaks are a separate duty in the same section

Subdivision 1 is not part of the accommodation analysis; it is its own obligation. Paragraph (a): “An employer must provide reasonable break times each day to an employee who needs to express milk. The break times may run concurrently with any break times already provided to the employee. An employer shall not reduce an employee’s compensation for time used for the purpose of expressing milk.”

Paragraph (b) requires “reasonable efforts to provide a clean, private, and secure room or other location, in close proximity to the work area, other than a bathroom or a toilet stall, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public and that includes access to an electrical outlet.” The same paragraph then adds the limit: “The employer would be held harmless if reasonable effort has been made.” The obligation as written is one of reasonable effort rather than of assured result, and paragraph (a)’s break-time duty is stated in absolute terms while paragraph (b)’s room duty is not.

Paragraph (c) applies the same one-employee definition. Paragraph (d) carries the same anti-retaliation language.

Breaks generally are covered separately — see breaks and overtime after January 1, 2026.

Twelve weeks, and who chooses the length

Minn. Stat. § 181.941, subd. 1:

(a) An employer must grant an unpaid leave of absence to an employee who is:

(1) a biological or adoptive parent in conjunction with the birth or adoption of a child; or

(2) a female employee for prenatal care, or incapacity due to pregnancy, childbirth, or related health conditions.

(b) The length of the leave shall be determined by the employee, but must not exceed 12 weeks, unless agreed to by the employer.

The leave is unpaid — that word is in the statute. Wage replacement, if any, comes from somewhere else, which is the subject of two sections below.

Subdivision 2 sets the timing. “The leave shall begin at a time requested by the employee.” The employer may adopt reasonable policies on the timing of requests and may require reasonable notice of the start date and estimated duration. For birth or adoption leave under subd. 1(a)(1), “the leave must begin within 12 months of the birth or adoption; except that, in the case where the child must remain in the hospital longer than the mother, the leave must begin within 12 months after the child leaves the hospital.” That is a deadline for beginning the leave, not for finishing it.

Subdivision 3 prohibits retaliation “for requesting or obtaining a leave of absence as provided by this section,” in the same nine-verb formula the legislature uses across chapter 181. Subdivision 4 requires the employer to maintain group insurance coverage during the leave on the same terms as § 181.939, subd. 2(f).

What can be counted against the 12 weeks

This is where the popular description of Minnesota’s leave law is wrong, and it is wrong in the direction that hurts.

Minn. Stat. § 181.943, in full:

(a) The length of leave provided under section 181.941 may be reduced by any period of:

(1) paid parental, disability, personal, medical, or sick leave, or accrued vacation provided by the employer so that the total leave does not exceed 12 weeks, unless agreed to by the employer; or

(2) leave taken for the same purpose by the employee under United States Code, title 29, chapter 28.

(b) Nothing in sections 181.940 to 181.943 prevents any employer from providing leave benefits in addition to those provided in sections 181.940 to 181.944 or otherwise affects an employee’s rights with respect to any other employment benefit.

(c) Notwithstanding paragraphs (a) and (b), the length of leave provided under section 181.941 must not be reduced by any period of paid or unpaid leave taken for prenatal care medical appointments.

United States Code, title 29, chapter 28 is the Family and Medical Leave Act. So the statute says, in terms, that FMLA leave taken for the same purpose may be counted against the Minnesota 12 weeks, and that employer-provided paid parental, disability, personal, medical, or sick leave and accrued vacation may be counted too.

Paragraph (b) is a floor, not a multiplier: it preserves an employer’s ability to offer more and preserves the employee’s rights in other benefits. It does not add weeks.

Paragraph (c) is the one absolute in the section. Prenatal care appointments — paid or unpaid — cannot be debited against the 12 weeks. An employee who takes a dozen partial days for prenatal visits over the course of a pregnancy still has the whole 12 weeks afterward.

One question the section does not answer. Earned sick and safe time under Minn. Stat. §§ 181.9445 to 181.9448 is paid sick leave, and § 181.943(a)(1) permits a reduction for “sick leave . . . provided by the employer.” Whether statutory earned sick and safe time is “provided by the employer” within the meaning of that clause is not addressed anywhere in § 181.943, and no Minnesota appellate decision is cited on this page for it. The section is silent, and this page does not fill the silence. What the earned sick and safe time statute does say about its own uses is set out in earned sick and safe time.

Coming back

Minn. Stat. § 181.942, subd. 1(a), draws a distinction inside a single sentence pair:

An employee returning from a leave of absence under section 181.939 or 181.941 is entitled to return to employment in the employee’s former position or in a position of comparable duties, number of hours, and pay. An employee returning from a leave of absence longer than one month must notify a supervisor at least two weeks prior to return from leave. An employee returning from a leave under section 181.9412 or sections 181.9445 to 181.9448 is entitled to return to employment in the employee’s former position.

Pregnancy accommodation leave and parenting leave get the former position or a comparable one. School conference leave and earned sick and safe time get the former position, full stop. Two standards, same subdivision.

The two-week notice obligation applies to any leave under that subdivision longer than one month, and it runs to a supervisor.

Subdivision 1(b) is the exception. If the employer conducts a layoff during the leave and the employee would have lost the position anyway “pursuant to the good faith operation of a bona fide layoff and recall system, including a system under a collective bargaining agreement,” reinstatement is not required — but “the employee retains all rights under the layoff and recall system . . . as if the employee had not taken the leave.”

Subdivision 2 sets the terms of return: the same rate of pay “plus any automatic adjustments in the employee’s pay scale that occurred during leave period,” and retention of “all accrued preleave benefits of employment and seniority, as if there had been no interruption in service.” Subdivision 3 permits a part-time return by agreement without forfeiting the right to return at the end of the leave.

The paid leave program is money, not weeks

Minnesota’s paid family and medical leave benefits began January 1, 2026 and are governed by chapter 268B. That chapter pays partial wage replacement; the job-protected 12 weeks in § 181.941 come from chapter 181. They are different entitlements from different statutes, and the reader who conflates them will misjudge both.

Minn. Stat. § 268B.06, subd. 1(a)(2), lists among the qualifying reasons that the applicant “was unable to perform regular work due to a serious health condition, a qualifying exigency, safety leave, family care, bonding, or medical care related to pregnancy. For bonding leave, eligibility ends 12 months after birth or placement.” Bonding leave is exempt from the chapter’s seven-day qualifying event requirement. § 268B.06, subd. 2(b).

And the two statutes are wired to run together rather than in series. Minn. Stat. § 268B.27, subd. 1: “An employer may require leave taken under this chapter to run concurrently with leave taken for the same purpose under section 181.941 or the Family and Medical Leave Act, United States Code, title 29, sections 2601 to 2654, as amended.”

The benefit side, the application, the appeal deadline, and the chapter’s own employment protections are covered in Minnesota paid leave.

The two federal overlays

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Under 42 U.S.C. § 2000gg-1, it is an unlawful employment practice for a covered entity to:

(1) not make reasonable accommodations to the known limitations related to the pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions of a qualified employee, unless such covered entity can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business of such covered entity;

(2) require a qualified employee affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions to accept an accommodation other than any reasonable accommodation arrived at through the interactive process referred to in section 2000gg(7) of this title;

(3) deny employment opportunities to a qualified employee if such denial is based on the need of the covered entity to make reasonable accommodations to the known limitations related to the pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions of the qualified employee;

(4) require a qualified employee to take leave, whether paid or unpaid, if another reasonable accommodation can be provided to the known limitations related to the pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions of the qualified employee; or

(5) take adverse action in terms, conditions, or privileges of employment against a qualified employee on account of the employee requesting or using a reasonable accommodation to the known limitations related to the pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions of the employee.

“Covered entity” includes “an employer, which means a person engaged in industry affecting commerce who has 15 or more employees as defined in section 2000e(b) of this title.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000gg(2)(B)(i). “Known limitation” is defined broadly at § 2000gg(4) as a “physical or mental condition related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions that the employee or employee’s representative has communicated to the employer whether or not such condition meets the definition of disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Act was enacted December 29, 2022 and, by § 109 of division II of Public Law 117-328, took effect 180 days later.

The FMLA. 29 U.S.C. § 2612(a)(1) entitles an eligible employee “to a total of 12 workweeks of leave during any 12-month period” for, among other reasons, “the birth of a son or daughter of the employee and in order to care for such son or daughter” and “the placement of a son or daughter with the employee for adoption or foster care.” Paragraph (a)(2) expires that entitlement “at the end of the 12-month period beginning on the date of such birth or placement.”

Two federal gates stand in front of that entitlement and have no Minnesota counterpart. Section 2611(2)(A) requires that the employee have been employed “for at least 12 months by the employer with respect to whom leave is requested” and “for at least 1,250 hours of service with such employer during the previous 12-month period.” Section 2611(2)(B)(ii) excludes an employee “employed at a worksite at which such employer employs less than 50 employees if the total number of employees employed by that employer within 75 miles of that worksite is less than 50.” And § 2611(4)(A)(i) defines “employer” as one who “employs 50 or more employees for each working day during each of 20 or more calendar workweeks in the current or preceding calendar year.”

An employee who fails all three of those federal tests still has the Minnesota 12 weeks. That is the practical consequence of a one-employee definition.

Remedies

Two doors, and they are not the same door.

The private action is Minn. Stat. § 181.944:

In addition to any other remedies provided by law, a person injured by a violation of sections 181.172, paragraph (a) or (d), 181.939 to 181.943, and 181.9445 to 181.9448 may bring a civil action to recover any and all damages recoverable at law, together with costs and disbursements, including reasonable attorney’s fees, and may receive injunctive and other equitable relief as determined by a court.

Sections 181.939 through 181.943 are inside that range, so the accommodation duty, the lactation duty, the 12-week leave, the reinstatement right, and § 181.943 are all covered by it.

The administrative door is Minn. Stat. § 177.27. Subdivision 4 authorizes the commissioner of labor and industry to issue a compliance order for a long list of sections that expressly includes “181.939 to 181.943.” Subdivision 7 then makes part of the consequence mandatory: on a finding of violation and an order to comply, “the commissioner shall order the employer to pay to the aggrieved parties back pay, gratuities, and compensatory damages, less any amount actually paid to the aggrieved parties by the employer, and for an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.” A repeated or willful violator faces “an additional civil penalty of up to $10,000 for each violation for each employee.”

Neither § 181.939 nor § 181.941 states a limitations period of its own. This page does not supply one; deadlines across Minnesota employment statutes are collected in every Minnesota employment deadline in one table.

The notice you were supposed to get

Section 181.939, subd. 3, puts the burden of telling you on the employer:

An employer shall inform employees of their rights under this section at the time of hire and when an employee makes an inquiry about or requests parental leave. Information must be provided in English and the primary language of the employee as identified by the employee. An employer that provides an employee handbook to its employees must include in the handbook notice of employee rights and remedies under this section. The commissioner shall make available to employers the text to be included in the notice required by this section in English and the five most common languages spoken in Minnesota.

The trigger is “at the time of hire” and again on inquiry about parental leave — before any request is formally made.

Currency

The revisor publishes these sections in the 2025 Minnesota Statutes edition. The History lines read: § 181.939, “1998 c 369 s 1; 2014 c 239 art 4 s 3; 1Sp2021 c 10 art 3 s 3; 2023 c 53 art 11 s 27; 2024 c 110 art 2 s 9”; § 181.940, “1987 c 359 s 1; 1990 c 577 s 1; 1991 c 268 s 1; 2014 c 239 art 3 s 1; 2023 c 53 art 11 s 28,29”; § 181.941, “1987 c 359 s 2; 1990 c 577 s 2; 2014 c 239 art 3 s 2; 2023 c 53 art 11 s 30; 2024 c 110 art 2 s 10”; § 181.942, “1987 c 359 s 3; 1990 c 577 s 5; 2023 c 53 art 11 s 32; art 12 s 2”; § 181.943, “1987 c 359 s 4; 1988 c 659 s 1; 1990 c 577 s 6; 2014 c 239 art 3 s 5; 2024 c 110 art 2 s 11”; § 181.944, “1987 c 359 s 5; 1990 c 577 s 7; 2014 c 239 art 4 s 5; 2023 c 53 art 13 s 5.”

Checked against the revisor’s table of Minnesota Statutes affected by the 2026 Regular Session, queried one exact section at a time, none of §§ 181.939, 181.940, 181.941, 181.942, 181.943, 181.944, 177.27, 268B.06, or 268B.27 was amended, new, or repealed in 2026. Everything quoted above is current.

This page describes the machinery. Whether a particular request is a reasonable accommodation, whether a particular condition is a health condition related to pregnancy or childbirth, and whether a specific week of paid leave may be counted against the 12 are questions about facts and documents, and applying these sections to them is not what this page does.