HB 297 Montana House · 2025 Regular Session

Establish requirement for paid sick days

HB 297, known as the "Healthy Families and Workplaces Act," aimed to establish a requirement for paid sick leave for employees. It would have required employers with 10 or more employees to provide at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked, with an annual usage cap of 80 hours. Employees could carry over up to 40 unused hours to the following year. The bill also defined authorized uses for paid sick leave, protected employees from retaliation, and authorized the Department of Labor and Industry to enforce its provisions. Employers with existing paid leave policies that met or exceeded these requirements would have been exempt.
Bill status died 3 of 5 stages cleared
Introduction
Jan 2025
Committee Review
Jan 2025
House Passage
Feb 2025
Senate Passage
Governor
Introduced Jan 23, 2025 Last action May 20, 2025
Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

LC2528.pdf HB0297_1.pdf · 3 edits
MINOR
The bill text has been updated from a legislative committee version (LC2528) to a final House Bill version (HB 297). The substantive policy language, including the bill title, definitions, accrual rates, and employer requirements, remains identical. The changes are purely technical, involving the removal of committee markup symbols, the addition of sponsoring legislators' names, and the correction of the bill number and version identifier.
TECHNICAL

The bill identifier was changed from 'LC2528' (Legislative Committee version) to 'HB 297' (House Bill version), indicating the bill has moved through the legislative process.

The names of the bill's sponsors (S. Howell, J. Isaly, and others) were added to the header, which is standard for a final bill version.

Committee markup symbols (such as brackets around section references and deletion/insertion markers) were removed to present a clean, final text.

Floor votes · House Feb 5, 2025

How they voted

200
Passed
Total votes 20
Feb 5, 2025
D Democratic8
8 Yea
100% Yea
R Republican12
12 Yea
100% Yea
Vote distribution
All Yea All Nay Mixed No data
Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions
20
Key actions
1
Committee
1
Amendments
1
Feb 5, 2025
House · Passed
House Vote: pass (20-0)
house
Feb 5, 2025
Amended
(H) Tabled in Committee - (H) Business and Labor
lower
Jan 23, 2025
Committee
(H) Referred to Committee - (H) Business and Labor
lower
Jan 23, 2025
Introduced
(H) Introduced
lower
1 primary · 0 co-sponsors

Sponsors

Role
Legislator
Party
State
District
P
Photo of S.J. Howell
S.J. Howell
DDemocratic
MT
100