Missouri workers who began accruing paid sick leave in May 2025 lost the mandate on August 28, 2025, under House Bill 567, signed by Governor Mike Kehoe on July 10, 2025. The law repealed Proposition A, the earned paid sick time measure roughly 58 percent of voters approved in November 2024. Employers may still offer the leave voluntarily, but no employer in the state is required to.
Proposition A had required one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked and annual inflation adjustments to the state minimum wage. According to the Missouri Independent's calculation at the time of repeal, a 40-hour-a-week worker who started accruing on May 1, 2025, when the measure took effect, had accumulated about 22 hours of leave by the repeal date — hours the statute let employers choose whether to honor.
What changes, and for whom
For workers, the direct effect is the loss of a statewide floor: roughly 600,000 Missourians had lacked any paid sick time before Proposition A, per advocates' estimates cited in legislative debate. Employers no longer face recordkeeping and notice duties tied to accrual, and service-sector workers who gained leave in May saw it lapse in August.
The bill also repealed future cost-of-living increases to Missouri's minimum wage. The wage stands at $13.75 an hour for 2026, and any further increase now requires action by the legislature rather than automatic indexing, per the Missouri Department of Labor's guidance.
Missouri is the clearest decided instance of a legislature unwinding a voter-approved workplace mandate within its first year, a reversal labor groups have challenged politically in neighboring states that passed similar ballot measures, including Alaska and Nebraska. Under the repeal text, employers who keep the leave voluntarily set their own accrual terms, outside any state floor. No court has restored the Missouri mandate; the repeal is in force as written.
What Proposition A had put in place
The measure voters approved in November 2024 did two things: it guaranteed one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, and it tied the state minimum wage to annual inflation adjustments. Both took effect for accrual purposes on May 1, 2025, when workers began banking hours.
House Bill 567, signed July 10, 2025, unwound both. The accrival mandate ended August 28, 2025, and the wage's automatic indexing ended with it, leaving the rate at $13.75 an hour for 2026, per the state labor department's guidance cited in the article.
What the transition left workers and employers to sort out
The gap between May and August produced accrued hours with an uncertain status. The Missouri Independent's calculation put a 40-hour week worker's accrual at about 22 hours by repeal day, and the statute let employers choose whether to honor those hours, as the article reports. Workers who used or lost that bank learned the answer employer by employer.
For employers, the repeal removed recordkeeping and notice duties tied to accrual. Companies that kept the benefit did so as policy, not obligation, and could revise it as any other policy term.
Where else the question lives
Missouri is not alone in reconsidering voter-approved workplace measures, as the article notes it is the clearest decided instance. A number of states and cities maintain earned sick time laws of their own, on their own terms, and nothing in the Missouri repeal reaches them. Workers who move between jurisdictions meet a patchwork rather than a national standard.
The federal layer adds no paid sick leave mandate; the Fair Labor Standards Act governs wages and hours, not leave entitlements. The result is that the question returns to each statehouse that touches it.
What to watch
The wage number is the next visible variable: at $13.75 for 2026, any further movement now requires legislative action rather than the indexing formula, per the guidance the article cites. Whether employers who kept accrued-hours banks maintain them through 2026 is a private matter visible only in workplace policy.
Ballot-measure law of this kind invites initiative-and-referendum contests, and any organized response would surface as a new petition rather than a court ruling on the old one.
How repeal by statute works against a ballot measure
Ballot measures and statutes occupy the same legal ground once enacted, and a legislature that can pass a law can unmake one. Proposition A took effect through the initiative process; House Bill 567 undid it through the ordinary one — passage by both chambers and the governor's signature on July 10, 2025, as the article recounts.
The asymmetry is political rather than legal. A measure roughly 58 percent of voters approved was repealed by the representatives those voters elected, and the repeal's supporters and critics described that fact differently ever after. The law's answer is that both routes make law.
What workers and employers are left with is the statutory residue the article inventories: no accrual mandate, a $13.75 wage floor for 2026 without indexing, accrued hours whose honoring is an employer's choice, and any future change requiring another act of the legislature or another petition.
Where the state's documents live
House Bill 567 and Proposition A are both public texts, and the Missouri Department of Labor's guidance pages carry the current wage figures the article cites. The ballot measure's election results, roughly 58 percent approval in November 2024, are election records.
For a worker or employer in the state, the operative documents are the statute as amended and the department's guidance: no accrual mandate, a $13.75 floor for 2026, and no automatic indexing. Anything further requires the legislature or another petition, as the article's closing frame notes.
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