DC Paid Family Leave cut: $1,100 a week, 6 weeks for family care

DC's paid leave program got smaller on October 1, 2026. For any claim filed on or after that date, the maximum weekly benefit drops from $1,190 to $1,100, paid medical leave falls from 12 weeks to 10 weeks, and paid leave to care for a sick family member falls from 12 weeks to 6 weeks. Parental leave stays at 12 weeks and prenatal leave at 2. The cuts come from the Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Support Act of 2026 (Bill 26-661), which the DC Council passed on final reading on July 7, 2026.

The program covers private-sector workers in the District. It doesn't cover DC government or federal employees, and workers pay nothing into it: employers fund it with a payroll tax. That tax is the part that did not change, which tells you what this cut is really about.

What changed, and what didn't

DC Paid Family Leave	Applied before Oct. 1, 2026	Applied on or after Oct. 1, 2026
Medical leave (your own serious health condition)	12 weeks	10 weeks
Family leave (caring for a family member)	12 weeks	6 weeks
Parental leave (new child)	12 weeks	12 weeks
Prenatal leave	2 weeks	2 weeks
Maximum weekly benefit, all leave types	$1,190	$1,100

The overall ceiling also stays where it was: 12 weeks in a 52-week period for any mix of parental, family and medical leave, or 14 weeks if you add prenatal leave before a birth. The wage replacement formula, up to 90% of your average weekly wage, is untouched. What the lower cap does is cut the top of that formula off sooner.

The two cuts don't last the same amount of time. The Office of Paid Family Leave says the shorter medical and family leave periods stay in effect through October 1, 2030. The $1,100 cap has no end date: the Chief Financial Officer's fiscal impact statement describes it as permanent, rising each October 1 with Washington-area inflation only if the CFO first certifies that the paid leave fund can afford it.

The date that counts is the day you apply

This is the rule most likely to catch people out. Which set of limits you get depends on when you submit the application, not when your leave starts or when the medical event happened. Someone who applied on September 30 for leave starting in November keeps the old 12 weeks and the $1,190 cap. Someone whose parent had a stroke on September 25 and who applied on October 2 gets 6 weeks and $1,100. Claims already approved before October 1 are not affected.

How the weekly benefit is figured

The formula is in DC Code § 32-541.04(g), and it uses the DC minimum wage as its yardstick. Since July 1, 2026 that wage is $18.40 an hour, so 40 hours of it is $736 a week and 150% of that is $1,104. Call it the threshold.

Your average weekly wage is your gross DC wages in the 4 highest-paid of the last 5 quarters before your leave, divided by 52. On every dollar of it up to $1,104 you get 90%, which tops out at $993.60. On every dollar above $1,104 you get 50%. Then the cap applies.

Work that through and the new $1,100 cap starts to bite at an average weekly wage of $1,316.80, about $68,474 a year. The old $1,190 cap didn't bite until $1,496.80, about $77,834 a year. Below $1,316.80 a week, your weekly check is the same as before and only the number of weeks changed. Above $1,496.80, you lose the full $90 a week. In between, you lose part of it.

A worker on $3,000 a week ($156,000 a year) gets exactly the same dollars, because both the old and new formulas hit the cap. The difference is how much of the paycheck that covers. $1,100 is 36.7% of $3,000, down from 39.7%, and over 10 weeks of medical leave the gap between the $30,000 this worker would have earned before taxes and the $11,000 benefit is $19,000. For higher earners, DC paid leave was always a partial cushion. It is now a thinner one.

At the other end, someone on $1,200 a week gets $1,041.60 a week before and after the change ($993.60 plus half of the $96 above the threshold). Their loss is all in the weeks: $12,499.20 for 12 weeks of family leave under the old rules, $6,249.60 for 6 weeks now. The family leave cut halves the benefit for every single claimant, whatever they earn, which makes it the bigger change for most people.

New parents lose money too

Parental leave kept its 12 weeks, so it's easy to read this as a change that skips new parents. It doesn't: the $1,100 cap applies to every leave type. A parent earning $1,500 a week or more who applies on or after October 1 gets $1,080 less over 12 weeks of bonding leave ($90 × 12). Prenatal leave, at 2 weeks, costs a top earner $180.

Why DC cut the benefit

Employers still pay a 0.75% tax on covered wages, and that rate is not changing. Only part of that money has to go to the paid leave fund; the rest goes to the District's General Fund. In March 2026 the CFO certified that keeping benefits at their old level would need 0.25% of wages dedicated to the fund from fiscal year 2027. With the shorter leave, the lower cap and a smaller required reserve (six months of projected benefits instead of nine), the dedicated share drops to 0.14% in fiscal 2027. The CFO puts the extra money moved to the General Fund at $74.9 million in fiscal 2027 and $163.7 million over four years.

That is the honest description: the payroll tax is the same, and more of it now pays for the rest of the budget. If you work in DC and a leave event is coming, apply as soon as you're allowed to, and check whether your employer's own paid leave or short-term disability plan covers the weeks DC no longer pays. DC paid leave also doesn't protect your job; that comes from other laws, such as the federal FMLA, if they apply to you.

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