Effective August 1, 2023, employers of 20 or more employees in Louisiana must provide employees a one-day unpaid leave of absence from work to obtain medically necessary genetic testing or cancer screening.
Employees must give at least 15 days’ notice when requesting the leave and must make a reasonable effort to schedule the leave in a way that does not disrupt the employer’s operations. Employers can require the employee to provide documentation confirming the leave is for performance of the genetic testing and/or cancer screening; however, employees are not required to disclose the results.
Employees may substitute any accrued paid time off or other applicable leave for the unpaid leave provided by the new law.
Employers will be required to conspicuously post the new poster being created by the Louisiana Workforce Commission explaining the provisions of this law. The new poster will be available for download on C2Connection.
The new law defines medically necessary as those healthcare services that are generally accepted by physicians or independent licensed practitioners and are “reasonably necessary to diagnose, correct, cure, alleviate, or prevent the worsening of a condition or conditions that endanger life, cause suffering or pain, or have resulted or will result in a handicap, physical deformity, or malfunction, and those for which no equally effective and less costly course of treatment is available or suitable for the recipient.” Services that are experimental, investigational, cosmetic, or not approved by the Federal Drug Administration are not considered medically necessary for the purposes of this law.