South Carolina Sick Leave: What Fills a Blank Statute Book

South Carolina leaves paid sick leave entirely to the employer, with no statute setting accrual, carryover, or payout, and it pairs that gap with the same absence of a state minimum wage law that Mississippi and Louisiana share, so the federal $7.25 rate governs by default in all three.

Federal FMLA replaces zero dollars of pay

South Carolina runs no paid family and medical leave program, so an employee dealing with a serious health condition or welcoming a new child has only federal FMLA to fall back on, and FMLA replaces zero wages. Qualifying takes an employer with 50 or more employees within 75 miles, plus an employee who has put in 12 months of service and 1,250 hours of actual work in that period. Company policy, not statute, covers everyone who falls short of those numbers. See the U.S. Department of Labor's FMLA overview.

A 6-month mini-COBRA below the 20-employee line

Six months in, six months of coverage out, is the rough shape of South Carolina's mini-COBRA at S.C. Code Ann. section 38-71-770, which reaches fully-insured group health plans at employers with fewer than 20 employees. An employee or member with at least six consecutive months of continuous coverage, along with dependents losing eligibility to death, divorce or a change in dependent status, can keep that coverage running for six more months, unless the original coverage lapsed for nonpayment. See S.C. Code 38-71-770.

Georgia sets its own threshold and a shorter window

South Carolina borders Georgia, which also has no statewide paid sick leave mandate, but structures its wage and continuation rules differently: Georgia's wage protections apply to employers of 6 or more, and its own group continuation law runs the remainder of the termination month plus three additional months rather than a flat six-month window. Two neighboring no-mandate states still need two separate continuation citations in the handbook, because the underlying statutes were never written to match each other.

Where a South Carolina employer gets this wrong is assuming the 6-month mini-COBRA lookback under S.C. Code 38-71-770 works like the 3-month windows most neighboring states use. It does not: an employee needs six consecutive months of prior coverage, not three, before the six months of continuation coverage become available at all.

In summary: South Carolina runs no wage law of its own, a 6-month mini-COBRA under S.C. Code 38-71-770 with a matching 6-month lookback, and FMLA's 50-employee, 12-month, 1,250-hour gate as the only federal floor.

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