The State of Michigan, through its Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO), has lost its bid to have an airline lawsuit thrown out over local sick pay laws for flight attendants, which are more generous than the rules many crew members enjoy under nationwide agreements.
In 2025, Michigan enacted its Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA) after a Supreme Court ruling, which provides a “comprehensive paid sick leave benefit scheme” for employees based in Michigan.
Unlike similar rules in some other states, there’s no carve-out for airline flight crews in Michigan’s ESTA. As a result, ESTA has put Michigan at loggerheads with some of the biggest airlines in the United States, including Delta Air Lines, which has a significant presence and a large crew base at Detroit Metro Airport.
Under ESTA, employees earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. For airline crews, the law assumes that pilots and flight attendants will have worked not less than 40 hours per week.
Employees are allowed to use up to 72 hours of ESTA-acquired paid sick leave per year, and can carry over the same number of hours of unused sick leave to the next year.
When employees use ESTA paid sick leave, airlines aren’t allowed to impose disciplinary leave points on them, and in the event that collective bargaining agreements don’t account for state-level paid sick leave schemes, the ESTA takes precedence.
On December 31, 2025, a group of U.S. airlines, through their Washington-based lobby group, Airlines 4 America, sued LEO’s director, Susan Corbin, seeking an injunction to prevent ESTA from applying to flight crew members belonging to airlines including American Airlines, Delta, United, Alaska, and Southwest Airlines.
The following month, LEO filed a motion to have the suit dismissed on the grounds that A4A has failed to state a claim. After months of legal wrangling, Michigan district judge Jane Beckering has issued her determination on LEOs request.
“A4A seeks a judgment against Director Corbin declaring that the ESTA, as applied to the Airlines, is preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act (ADA), and is therefore unenforceable by virtue of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” Judge Beckering’s opinion explains.
The ADA contains a broad federal preemption clause, which is meant to prevent states from enforcing laws that relate to an airline’s price, route, or service. Airlines have previously argued that paid sick leave laws have exactly this effect.
“Director Corbin argues that dismissal of A4A’s request of declaratory relief is warranted where the ESTA does not significantly impact airline prices, routes, or market entry, nor does it indirectly affect these aspects of air travel, and thus the ESTA is not preempted by the ADA,” the opinion continues.
“Director Corbin also points out that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a state paid sick leave law is not preempted by the ADA, and she argues that other recent district court case law improperly expands the preemptive application of the ADA.”
A4A argues that laws like ESTA “undermine carefully crafted” collective bargaining agreements, and that increases in flight crew absences would have the effect of raising airfares, and impact the sevice that airlines can offer passengers.
In her order, Judge Beckering explains that the court must take the opinion most favorable to A4A and assume that its concerns are legitimate.” Therefore, the Court concludes that A4A sufficiently alleges that the ESTA, as applied to the Airlines, is preempted by the ADA because the ESTA relates to and has a ‘significant impact on the Airlines’ ‘prices, routes, or services’.”
LEO’s motion for dismissal was, therefore, denied. LEO has been given 14 days to file an answer to A4A’s complaint from the date the order was signed on June 22.
