Bill shields parents from employer health premium clawback after birth leave
S. 1348 — Fairness for Stay-at-Home Parents Act · Filed by Mike Lee (R-UT) · Introduced Apr 8, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill amends the Family and Medical Leave Act to prohibit employers from recovering health insurance premiums they paid for an employee if that employee takes parental leave after a birth and then decides not to return to work. It also requires employers to notify employees of this protection when they take birth-related leave.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a straightforward prohibition on employer recovery of health premiums from employees who take birth-related leave and do not return, paired with a transparency requirement. It is a targeted worker protection, not a broad FMLA overhaul.
What the text implies
- Employers may respond by reducing health insurance benefits, raising premiums, or tightening eligibility for parental leave to offset the loss of premium recovery as a cost-control mechanism.
- The bill does not address whether employers can recover other leave-related costs (e.g., training, backfill wages), so the scope of the protection is limited to health premiums specifically.
- The notice requirement may increase administrative burden on employers but also creates a paper trail documenting employer compliance and employee awareness.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Parents who take leave after birth and choose not to return to work are protected from employer clawback of health insurance premiums, reducing financial barriers to parental caregiving decisions. The notice requirement ensures transparency about this protection.
Named in the bill
Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, Section 104(c)(2)(B), Section 104(c)(4), employers, employees, parents
Where it stands
- Apr 8, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Apr 8, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (917 characters) on Aug 11, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
As of — page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Bill shields parents from employer health premium clawback after birth leave” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s1348 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.