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Bill Summary · HB 810

HB 810 — State Employee Bereavement Leave (Up to 40 Hours)

Status: Passed First Reading
Introduced: November 12, 2024
Subject areas: Appropriations; Personnel; State employees; Leave; Death & dying; Salaries & benefits

Purpose / Intent

The bill creates a statutory paid bereavement leave benefit for State employees, giving workers paid time off after the death of an immediate family member or a colleague. It directs the State Human Resources Commission to adopt rules to implement the benefit and appropriates funds to cover the cost.

Key provisions

  • New statute (G.S. 126‑8.7) creating paid bereavement leave effective July 1, 2025. The law applies to death dates on or after that date.
  • Eligibility
    • Permanent, probationary, and time‑limited full‑time State employees: up to 40 hours paid leave for death of an immediate family member; up to 8 hours paid leave for death of a colleague.
    • Part‑time employees: prorated bereavement leave on an equitable basis.
    • Employees are eligible immediately upon hire for losses occurring on or after their first day of work.
  • Definitions
    • “Immediate family member” includes spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, dependents living in the household, and step/half/adoptive/foster/in‑law/legal ward and in loco parentis relationships.
    • “Colleague” means a coworker at the employee’s current agency who worked there within one year of death.
  • Use and documentation
    • No annual limit on uses of this leave when taken for qualified losses.
    • Leave for an immediate family member must be used within 180 days of the date (or discovery) of death and may be taken non‑consecutively as approved.
    • Colleague leave is limited to the time required to travel to and attend the funeral/memorial (not to exceed 8 hours) and may only be used on the date of the event; employees must provide documentation of attendance.
    • Employees must provide documentation of death (e.g., death certificate, obituary, funeral information) when requesting leave.
  • Administrative and other provisions
    • The Commission must adopt rules and policies to implement the benefit; governing boards for UNC, public schools, and community colleges must adopt substantially equivalent policies.
    • The leave is in addition to (does not require exhaustion of) sick or vacation leave and shared leave; it has no cash value at termination; it does not count toward retirement; it cannot be applied to negative leave balances or donated as shared leave.
    • Fraudulent attempts to obtain leave may result in discipline up to dismissal.

Appropriation / Fiscal impact

  • Appropriates $2,000,000 from the General Fund to the Reserve for Compensation Increases for each year of the 2025–2027 biennium to fund the paid bereavement leave.

Who is affected

  • State agency employees (permanent, probationary, time‑limited), public school employees, community college employees, and University of North Carolina employees — subject to adoption of equivalent policies by the appropriate governing entities.
  • Employers will need to revise leave policies, HR systems, and tracking to accommodate the new benefit and documentation requirements.

Implementation / Timeline

  • Effective date: July 1, 2025.
  • Applies to bereavement requests for deaths occurring on or after July 1, 2025.
  • The State Human Resources Commission must promulgate implementing rules before agencies begin administering the benefit.

Practical effects / considerations

  • Expands paid leave protections for State workers and standardizes bereavement coverage across many State employers.
  • Requires administrative actions (rulemaking, payroll/leave tracking, documentation procedures) and has an initial General Fund appropriation to cover estimated costs.

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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