Alabama has a leave law called the Adoption Promotion Act (APA), which provides unpaid, job-protected leave for parental leave reasons for both birth parents (within the first year of the child’s birth) and adoptive parents (within the first year of the child’s placement). Where an employee is eligible for each law, APA will generally run concurrently with federal FMLA. As part of our leave of absence service, The Larkin Company will track APA leaves.

The APA sets baseline standards for employers, ensuring that where employers provide leave of absence pay for biological parents, they also provide some leave pay for adoptive parents. If you, as an organization, are providing the same number of weeks of paid leave for adoptive parents, as you are biological parents, then you are in compliance with, and may be exceeding your obligations under this law. Alabama has also enacted House Bill 141, effective August 1, 2023, which will authorize disability insurers to offer paid family leave (PFL) benefits policies through employer-sponsored group insurance, or voluntary plans. This is not a formal state paid family and medical leave program, but instead simply establishes paid family leave benefits policies as a class of insurance. This, in turn, allows employers to include reasons such as medical, bonding, family care leave, and military exigency, within their policies in Alabama (Virginia, Florida, and Arkansas have a similar law – see here).

If you wish to add PFL to your policies, please discuss this with your insurer. If you do move forward to include PFL within your policies, please update your Larkin Account Manager so we can inform your employees of their benefits.

If you would like a reminder on the services that Larkin provides in general, please see here. 

N/A – there are no state leave income replacement benefits in Alabama. As noted above, the law does require that employees provide some pay for adoptive parents if they provide parental leave pay for biological parents.

Some leave laws require that you notify your employees about their rights under the law, such as, by providing a prescribed notice to new hires, displaying a poster in the workplace, and/or including information about that leave law in your company handbook. Below you will find a summary of the requirements for each law.

Where the law requires that a leave poster/notice must be provided to the employee when they request leave, The Larkin Company will provide the applicable document within our introductory leave packets (see “Larkin Enclosures” within this resource).

State Website(s)

Adoption Promotion Act, APA (Leave Law) – no specific website available.

State Law and Regulation(s)

APA 
House Bill 141