Missouri’s Republican governor on Thursday signed legislation repealing the paid sick leave portion of a ballot measure that the state’s voters approved with nearly 60% support in the 2024 election.
The short-lived provision, which will officially be repealed on August 28, required Missouri employers to provide workers with an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours of work. Businesses with 15 or more employees were required to provide up to 56 hours of earned paid sick time per year, and businesses with fewer than 15 employees were required to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick time.
The Missouri Budget Project estimated before its passage that the ballot measure’s paid sick leave benefits would reach 728,000 private-sector workers in the state.
The bill that Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed Thursday, known as H.B. 567, also restricts increases in the state’s minimum wage. The voter-approved initiative called for raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2026 and indexing it to inflation thereafter. H.B. 567 eliminates the inflation adjustment.
