Frequently Asked Questions

Cited answers to the questions Texas employers ask most — including the exceptions that change what you owe. Drawn from 45+ years of hands-on HR experience. General HR information, not legal advice.

What is the minimum wage in Texas, and can Austin or Houston require a higher one?

Texas names no rate of its own — Tex. Lab. Code § 62.051 requires 'the federal minimum wage under Section 6, Fair Labor Standards Act,' which is $7.25 an hour, so the Texas floor moves only when Congress moves the federal one, and the section states that rate 'except as provided by Section 62.057.' For most employees the state act does not even operate, because § 62.151 excludes anyone covered by the FLSA, and where it does operate § 62.052 allows a tip credit against the rate for a tipped employee. A city cannot raise the rate for private employers, since § 62.0515(a) supersedes a wage established by local ordinance, order or charter provision — but three carve-outs bind real employers: state and federal job-training and workforce-development programs; a wage floor a city or county writes into a contract or non-annexation agreement with you, which by the statute's terms also reaches your general contractor and subcontractors; and wages under a public contract, which § 62.0515(a) and § 62.151 both carve out on their face — so the state floor does not supersede a city's wage ordinance as applied to work under that city's own contracts, and Austin or Houston can set a higher rate there; on public construction specifically, Tex. Gov't Code ch. 2258 separately requires the locally prevailing per diem wage, though by § 2258.002(a) that chapter reaches only the construction of a public work and by § 2258.021(b) not maintenance work (Tex. Lab. Code §§ 62.051, 62.052, 62.0515, 62.057 and 62.151; Tex. Gov't Code ch. 2258; 29 U.S.C. § 206(a)(1)(C)).

Do I have to give employees meal or rest breaks in Texas, and can a city require them?

No Texas statute requires meal or rest breaks for adult employees, and a city cannot fill the gap — Tex. Lab. Code § 1.005 lists 'breaks' among the fields the Labor Code occupies and makes a conflicting municipal ordinance 'void, unenforceable,' though the challenge to that statute was dismissed on standing rather than decided on the merits, so no court has yet ruled on whether the preemption provision itself is valid. Federal law still controls how breaks are paid: a short break of roughly 5 to 20 minutes must be counted as hours worked, and a meal period is unpaid only where the employee is completely relieved of duty. Federal law also imposes one real break mandate — you must give a nursing employee reasonable break time to express milk for a year after the birth and a place other than a bathroom that is shielded from view, and an employer with fewer than 50 employees escapes it only by showing undue hardship, so most Texas employers are covered. Retail adds three Texas duties: you may not require seven consecutive days of work, you must give at least 24 consecutive hours off for rest or worship in each seven-day period in addition to the regular daily rest, and you must accommodate an employee's religious beliefs absent undue hardship and may not require work during one weekly worship service the employee asks off — none of which reaches a part-timer whose hours for you do not exceed 30 in a calendar week. Two things about that retail rule are missing from most summaries of it: violating it is a Class C misdemeanor, and § 52.003(c) gives you an affirmative defence where the employee volunteered to work the seventh consecutive day and signed a written statement to that effect that you countersigned, so the seven-day bar is not absolute — but the defence rests on a signed document rather than on an understanding (Tex. Lab. Code §§ 1.005, 52.001 and 52.003; 29 U.S.C. § 218d; 29 C.F.R. §§ 785.18 and 785.19).

How quickly do I have to give a departing employee their final paycheck in Texas?

If you discharge someone, pay in full not later than the sixth day after the discharge, and the Payday Law counts calendar days, so a Friday termination is due the following Thursday and usually means an off-cycle check. If the employee quits, final pay is due on the next regularly scheduled payday. Unused PTO is not automatically owed in Texas — vacation, holiday, sick, parental-leave and severance pay are 'wages' only when owed under a written agreement or a written policy — but once the policy is in writing, the payout is an enforceable wage. Whatever you owe, you may not shave it: § 61.018 permits a deduction only where a court has ordered it, a statute authorizes it, or the employee has authorized it in writing, so an unreturned laptop, a cash-drawer shortage or damaged equipment does not justify holding back the final cheque. A worker has 180 days from the date the wages came due to file a Payday Law claim with the Texas Workforce Commission and the statute makes that deadline jurisdictional, though it closes the administrative route rather than the courthouse — a breach-of-contract suit on the same unpaid wages is not governed by it. The deadline employers miss is their own: once the Commission mails a preliminary wage determination order, a party has 21 days to request a hearing, and one that lets the 21 days run is not entitled to judicial review of the order at all. The bad-faith administrative penalty is capped at the lesser of the wages claimed or $1,000 and Texas has no waiting-time penalty, but the Payday Law is not purely administrative — § 61.019 makes non-payment a third-degree felony, though only on narrow facts: the employer must have intended to avoid paying the wages either at the time it hired the employee or while intending to keep employing them, and must then have failed to pay after demand, so it rarely reaches an ordinary final-paycheck dispute (Tex. Lab. Code §§ 61.001(2), 61.001(7)(B), 61.014, 61.018, 61.019, 61.051(c), 61.053(c), 61.054(b) and 61.055).

When do I owe overtime in Texas — does a 12-hour day trigger it?

For pay, no — Texas has no overtime-pay statute at all: no daily overtime, no double-time tier, no seventh-day premium and no state exemption test, so a 12-hour day triggers no premium by itself, and the entitlement is purely federal at one and one-half times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. Texas does regulate overtime in one industry, and it is a scheduling rule rather than a pay rule: a hospital may not require a nurse to work mandatory overtime, may not use on-call time as a substitute, and may not discipline a nurse who refuses or who reports a violation of the chapter, subject only to four narrow exceptions rather than the three usually listed — a health care disaster that increases the need for health care personnel in the county, which operates without any declaration by anyone; a declared emergency; an unforeseeable event that could not prudently be anticipated; and a procedure already underway. Read the definition carefully before you build a schedule — mandatory overtime there means hours or days beyond those scheduled 'regardless of the length of a scheduled shift,' so a rostered 12-hour nursing shift is lawful and requiring the thirteenth hour is not, unless that hour is prescheduled on-call time or time immediately before or after the scheduled shift necessary to document or communicate patient status to ensure patient safety, both of which the same section expressly excludes from the definition. The chapter also moved recently: H.B. 2187, effective September 1, 2025, amended the definitions and the retaliation protection and added § 258.006, a complaint and enforcement route through the Health and Human Services Commission, so check the current text rather than an older summary. Separately, overtime you promised in a written policy or agreement is compensation owed for labor rendered, which the Payday Law defines as wages, so an employee can pursue it as a wage claim at the Texas Workforce Commission even where the FLSA itself would not require the premium (29 U.S.C. § 207(a)(1); Tex. Health & Safety Code §§ 258.001, 258.002, 258.003, 258.004, 258.005 and 258.006; H.B. 2187, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025); Tex. Lab. Code §§ 61.001(7)(A) and 61.051).

Are non-compete agreements enforceable in Texas?

Yes, if drafted properly: a covenant is enforceable when it is ancillary to or part of an otherwise enforceable agreement and its limits on time, geographic area and scope of activity are reasonable, and for ordinary employees there is no numeric cap. Draft it narrowly, because reformation is not a safety net — if a court finds the limits unreasonable it must reform the covenant and enforce it as reformed, but the relief granted to you is then limited to injunctive relief, so you recover no damages at all, and the court may make you pay the employee's attorney's fees if you knew the covenant was overbroad and still tried to enforce it beyond what was necessary. Health care is the exception, and the health care subsection is a single conjunctive list — a physician covenant that satisfies five of its six requirements is void, so treat it as a checklist rather than a summary. It must give the physician access to a list of patients and to their medical records, must not deny the physician the right to continue treating a patient through an acute illness even after the contract ends, must cap the buyout at the physician's total annual salary and wages, must expire within one year, must stay inside a five-mile radius, and must state its terms clearly and conspicuously in writing; and it is void if the physician is involuntarily discharged without good cause. Dentists, nurses and physician assistants get the same buyout, one-year and five-mile limits without the discharge rule, under a § 15.501(b) list that is conjunctive in the same way and carries four requirements, so read that subsection itself before you draft; and none of the buyout, one-year and five-mile requirements reach a covenant tied to a physician's business ownership interest in a licensed hospital or ambulatory surgical center — but the void-on-discharge-without-good-cause rule still does. Those 2025 limits apply only to a covenant entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025, so most agreements already in force remain governed by prior law (Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 15.50, 15.501, 15.51(c) and 15.52; S.B. 1318, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025), § 4).

Can I fire an employee in Texas without giving a reason?

Usually yes — Texas employment is at will and you owe no reason — but the exceptions are specific, and they are where the claims actually come from. By statute you may not discharge someone because of race, color, disability, religion, sex, national origin or age once you have 15 or more employees — where 'age' means 40 or older, 'sex' takes in pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, and 'race' takes in hair texture and protective hairstyles under the Texas CROWN Act at § 21.1095, which expressly reaches grooming and dress policies — while the sexual-harassment subchapter reaches an employer with even one employee. The same chapter separately bars retaliation against an employee who opposed a discriminatory practice, made or filed a charge or complaint, or testified, assisted or participated in an investigation, proceeding or hearing under it, and that retaliation claim is litigated more often than the underlying discrimination claim. Regardless of size you may not fire for filing a workers' compensation claim in good faith, for complying with a valid subpoena, for jury service, for voting, for union membership or nonmembership, or because an employee was ordered to authorized state military training or duty. The workers' compensation protection is broader than its usual one-line summary: § 451.001 also covers an employee who hired a lawyer to represent them in a claim, who instituted a proceeding under the Act, or who testified or is about to testify in one, and it bars not only discharge but discrimination against the employee 'in any other manner,' so a demotion or a schedule change can violate it. The one judicial exception is narrow: Sabine Pilot covers 'only the discharge of an employee for the sole reason that the employee refused to perform an illegal act,' and the act refused has to be one the law makes criminal, because the Court grounded the exception in public policy 'as expressed in the laws of this state and the United States which carry criminal penalties' — so a mixed-motive discharge falls outside it, as does a refusal to do something merely unethical or unlawful in a purely civil sense, and the concurring justice read the opinion to leave that question to the judge rather than the jury. That same 1985 opinion catalogued the statutory exceptions that existed then, under their pre-codification article numbers: workers' compensation retaliation, union membership or nonmembership, active duty in the State Military Forces, jury service, and the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act. The subpoena, voting and one-employee sexual-harassment protections listed above all came later, which is the more useful lesson — the common-law rule was never the whole picture, and the statutory list has kept growing since. Do not confuse at-will with right-to-work, which is the separate rule that union membership cannot be a condition of employment, and remember that a discharge starts the six-day final-pay clock (Sabine Pilot Service, Inc. v. Hauck, 687 S.W.2d 733 (Tex. 1985); Tex. Lab. Code §§ 21.002(8), 21.051, 21.055, 21.101, 21.106, 21.1095, 21.141, 21.142, 52.051, 61.014(a), 101.052 and 451.001; Tex. Gov't Code § 437.204; Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 122.001; Tex. Elec. Code § 276.004).

Do I have to carry workers' compensation insurance in Texas?

Usually no — Texas is the only state where private coverage is elective, and the statute says an employer 'may elect to obtain' it — but elective is not never required: a governmental entity awarding a building or construction contract must require the contractor, and through it each subcontractor, to certify coverage for employees on that public project. Declining is not passive: a non-subscriber must file written notice of non-coverage with the Division of Workers' Compensation, which by DWC rule means annually between February 1 and April 30 and within 30 days of hiring its first employee, and failing to file is an administrative violation. Dropping coverage you already have is a separate filing on its own clock: written notice to the Division within 10 days, with the termination effective on the later of the 30th day after the notice is filed or the date the policy is cancelled, and premium owed until that date. A non-subscriber with five or more employees also carries a reporting duty most never learn about — each work-related injury causing lost time, each occupational disease and each death goes to the Division within one month and seven days. Whether or not you carry coverage, tell each new employee at hire that coverage exists or does not, post that notice conspicuously, and notify employees within 15 days of any change. Declining also costs you the contributory negligence, assumption of risk and fellow-servant defenses in an employee injury suit — and do not try to buy those defenses back with a waiver, because the two waiver rules are where non-subscribers most often go wrong: a pre-injury waiver of the employee's right to sue is void and unenforceable, and a post-injury waiver is valid only if it is entered into no earlier than the tenth business day after the date of the initial report of the injury — the report date, not the injury date — and only if the employee entered it voluntarily knowing its effect, received a medical evaluation from a nonemergency care doctor before signing, and the waiver states the parties' true intent in writing, conspicuously and in larger or contrasting type (Tex. Lab. Code §§ 406.002(a), 406.004, 406.005, 406.007, 406.033(a), 406.033(e), 406.033(f), 406.096 and 411.032; 28 Tex. Admin. Code §§ 110.103(b), 110.105 and 160.2).

What are the rules for salaried employees in Texas — when are they exempt from overtime, and how often do I have to pay them?

Texas has no state salary threshold and no state duties test, so exemption is decided under the federal executive, administrative and professional tests, and the general federal salary floor is $684 a week. The floor is only one of three tests, and the one employers actually lose on is the salary-basis test: the salary has to be a predetermined amount that is not reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work, so docking an exempt employee for a partial-day absence, or taking a disciplinary deduction from their pay, can defeat the exemption you were relying on no matter how well the duties test is satisfied. Do not treat that floor as universal, because the regulation itself carves out the highest-paid people in many Texas workplaces: it does not apply at all to teachers, to licensed lawyers and physicians actually practising, or to medical interns and residents; outside salespeople have no salary test; computer employees can qualify at $27.63 an hour instead; and a highly compensated employee at $107,432 in total annual compensation qualifies on a reduced duties showing. What Texas adds is pay frequency, keyed directly to that federal status: an employee exempt from FLSA overtime must be paid at least once a month and everyone else at least twice a month, in pay periods as nearly as possible of an equal number of days, and if you never designate paydays the statute designates the first and the fifteenth for you. Post your paydays conspicuously, and note that calling someone exempt when they are not is an FLSA violation and also a Texas Payday Law violation whenever the misclassification is why you paid them only monthly (29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1); 29 C.F.R. §§ 541.500(c), 541.600, 541.601 and 541.602; Tex. Lab. Code §§ 61.011 and 61.012).

Does Texas require paid sick leave? I thought Austin passed an ordinance.

No Texas law requires paid sick leave, and there is no general federal mandate either — the FMLA gives unpaid leave and only at 50 or more employees, and crossing 50 makes you a covered employer without making anyone eligible, because an individual employee also needs 12 months of employment with you, 1,250 hours worked in the preceding 12 months, and a worksite where you employ 50 within 75 miles. One federal exception is live and catches Texas employers who do not think of themselves as regulated: a covered federal contractor must let employees accrue at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked on or in connection with a covered contract, which reaches Davis-Bacon construction, Service Contract Act services, concessions and contracts tied to federal property, though not contracts to manufacture or supply goods. Austin's ordinance is dead law: on interlocutory review the Third Court of Appeals held that the Texas Minimum Wage Act 'preempts local regulations that establish a wage,' that the ordinance establishes a wage and is therefore unconstitutional, the Texas Supreme Court denied review in 2020, and since 2023 Tex. Lab. Code § 1.005 has separately listed 'employment leave' among the fields the Labor Code occupies and declared a conflicting municipal ordinance 'void, unenforceable.' The trap runs the other way: if you offer sick leave voluntarily, pay owed under your written policy is 'wages' under the Payday Law, so administering it inconsistently creates the very wage-claim exposure the absence of a mandate seemed to avoid. Texas adds one parity rule on top of that: if your policy lets employees use personal leave to care for a sick child, § 21.0595 makes it an unlawful employment practice to refuse the same leave for a foster child under the conservatorship of the Department of Family and Protective Services, and it binds at the same 15-employee threshold as the rest of Chapter 21 (Tex. Ass'n of Bus. v. City of Austin, 565 S.W.3d 425 (Tex. App.—Austin 2018, pet. denied); Tex. Lab. Code §§ 1.005, 21.002(8), 21.0595 and 61.001(7)(B); 29 U.S.C. §§ 2611(2) and 2611(4)(A)(i); Exec. Order No. 13706 and 29 C.F.R. §§ 13.3 and 13.5(a)(1)).

What do I have to set up when I hire my first employee in Texas?

Four state-level items sit on top of the federal Form I-9 and Form W-4. Report the person to the Texas Employer New Hire Reporting program at the Office of the Attorney General within 20 days — that deadline is federal and Texas adopts it by requiring reporting to the state directory in accordance with that federal law — and note the rehire limit: someone you employed before is reportable only if they were separated or went without earnings from you for at least 60 consecutive days. Texas is broader than the federal rule in one way that catches people out, because Tex. Fam. Code § 234.101(1) defines 'employee' for new-hire reporting to include an independent contractor as the Internal Revenue Service defines that term, naming rideshare and delivery-platform drivers expressly — so a 1099 engagement is reportable in Texas even where you would not report it under the federal directory rule alone. Post a conspicuous notice of your paydays, knowing they default to the first and the fifteenth if you never designate them, and tell the new employee in writing whether or not you carry workers' compensation, which a non-subscriber owes too, because what it is noticing is the absence of coverage — and if you are a non-subscriber, that first hire also starts a 30-day clock to file your written notice of non-coverage with the Division of Workers' Compensation, which is a separate filing from the notice you hand the employee. Register with the Texas Workforce Commission for unemployment tax, which the employer pays with no employee withholding, but do not assume the first hire creates the liability: it attaches once you have paid $1,500 in wages in a calendar quarter or employed someone for part of a day in 20 different calendar weeks, with a separate four-employee, 20-week test for 501(c)(3) nonprofits under § 201.023 — which § 201.021(b) puts outside the general test along with farm and ranch labor under § 201.028 — while domestic service in a private home answers to its own trigger at § 201.027, $1,000 in cash wages in a calendar quarter (Tex. Fam. Code §§ 234.101(1), 234.101(3) and 234.102 and 42 U.S.C. § 653a(b)(2)(A); Tex. Lab. Code §§ 61.012, 201.021(a), 201.021(b), 201.023, 201.027, 201.028, 204.002, 406.004 and 406.005(b)).

Can I still ask about criminal history on our Texas job application?

Statewide, yes — Texas has no ban-the-box law, and if you read that one passed in 2025, HB 2466 was referred to a House subcommittee on March 17, 2025 and never left committee. The local picture has moved and most published guidance is stale: Tex. Lab. Code § 1.005 puts 'hiring practices' in the field the Labor Code occupies and declares a conflicting municipal ordinance 'void, unenforceable,' the cities' challenge to that statute was dismissed on standing without reaching the merits, leaving the preemption question itself undecided, and DeSoto repealed its own Fair Chance Hiring article outright in September 2025 even though the City's website still describes it. Austin has not repealed Chapter 4-15 and still publishes it and takes complaints, so if you employ at least fifteen people whose primary work location is Austin the cautious course is to keep criminal-history questions off the application, wait for a conditional offer, run an individualized assessment, and tell the applicant in writing if criminal history drove the adverse decision — noting the ordinance never applied to a job that a law or a mandated insurance or bond requirement disqualifies on criminal history, and that its penalty of up to $500 bites only if you fail to cure within ten business days of written notice from the City. Everywhere in Texas the federal FCRA governs the mechanics of a background check, and Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 142.002 blocks a negligent-hiring claim resting solely on the fact of a conviction — but read the rest of that section before you rely on it, because § 142.002(b) withdraws the protection where you knew or should have known of the conviction and the offence was job-related, was an offence listed in Article 42A.054 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, or was a sexually violent offence, and an employer who actually ran a check will have known; and § 142.002(c) withdraws it entirely in a suit over misuse of funds or property where the employee had a fraud conviction and was hired into a position carrying fiduciary responsibility. The shield is thinnest exactly where an employer would most want to lean on it. Texas is also stricter than the FCRA about what a background-check vendor may report to you: Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 20.05(a)(4) bars a consumer reporting agency from furnishing a record of a conviction more than seven years old measured from disposition, release or parole, where the federal FCRA sets no age limit on convictions at all; § 20.05(b)(3) lifts the Texas cap only where the job pays $75,000 or more; and § 20.05(c) requires consent before medical information is furnished (Tex. Lab. Code § 1.005; Austin City Code §§ 4-15-2(F), 4-15-3(B), 4-15-4 and 4-15-8(A) (Ord. No. 20160324-019); 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b); Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 20.05; Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 142.002).

Do I have to give employees time off to vote or to serve on a jury in Texas?

Yes to both. You may not refuse to let an employee be absent to vote on election day or during early voting, or subject them to a penalty for going — and the statute defines 'penalty' as a loss or reduction of wages or another benefit of employment, so docking the time is itself the offense, a Class C misdemeanor — unless the polls are open for two consecutive hours outside that employee's working hours, in which case no time off is required. For jury service the protection is the job rather than the pay, and the text of the rule is genuinely unsettled: § 122.001 was amended twice in the same 2019 session by bills that did not account for each other, and both versions are still printed — one — the H.B. 504 text — says a private employer may not terminate the employment of a permanent employee because the employee serves as a juror or grand juror; the broader S.B. 370 text says an employer may not discharge, threaten to discharge, intimidate or coerce any permanent employee because the employee serves as a juror or because of the employee's attendance or scheduled attendance in connection with that service in any court in the United States. Work from the broader version, since nothing repealed it. Damages run from one year's to five years' compensation plus reinstatement and attorney's fees, with the conduct also punishable as a Class B misdemeanor or by contempt; § 122.003 supplies a limited changed-circumstances defence, and § 122.002(c) gives the employee two years to sue. Grant the absence, document it, and be careful with attendance marks, because both statutes reach penalties well short of discharge (Tex. Elec. Code § 276.004; Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 122.001, 122.002, 122.0021 and 122.003).

We only have five employees — do Texas harassment and discrimination laws apply to a company our size?

For sexual harassment, yes. Since 2021 the Labor Code's sexual-harassment subchapter defines 'employer' as a person who 'employs one or more employees,' so a five-person company is covered where Title VII is not, and the same definition reaches a person who 'acts directly in the interests of an employer in relation to an employee' — the textual basis on which supervisors and owners get named individually, though the subchapter never says so in terms and I would not publish it as settled. The duty is concrete: you commit an unlawful employment practice if sexual harassment of an employee occurs and you or your agents or supervisors knew or should have known and failed to take immediate and appropriate corrective action, and the employee has 300 days rather than the usual 180 to file with the Texas Workforce Commission. The rest of the Texas discrimination statute is different — discrimination because of race, color, disability, religion, sex, national origin or age reaches only an employer with 15 or more employees for each working day in 20 or more calendar weeks, the same threshold as Title VII, and if you grow into it the contours are worth knowing now: 'age' there means 40 or older, 'sex' takes in pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, and 'race' takes in hair texture and protective hairstyles under the Texas CROWN Act at § 21.1095, which expressly reaches grooming and dress policies — so at five employees your live state exposure is harassment rather than general discrimination, which means a written anti-harassment policy and a complaint route that does not run through the harasser are the two things worth having (Tex. Lab. Code §§ 21.002(8), 21.051, 21.101, 21.106, 21.1095, 21.141, 21.142 and 21.202(a-1)).

How much family or medical leave do I have to give a Texas employee?

Texas has no state family and medical leave statute, no state paid family leave insurance, and no state or local paid sick leave — the Austin, Dallas and San Antonio ordinances were struck down as preempted. So the federal FMLA at 50 or more employees is the entire job-protected entitlement, and below 50 a private Texas employer owes no family or medical leave at all beyond what its own policy promises. Two tests decide FMLA, and merging them is the common error: the employer is covered at 50 employees within 75 miles, while the individual qualifies only after 12 months of employment and 1,250 hours in the preceding year. Three Texas-specific points sit around that. First, once you are at 15 or more employees, the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act makes it an unlawful employment practice to refuse an employee the same leave for a foster child under the conservatorship of the Department of Family and Protective Services that you would grant for the birth of a child — a parity rule rather than a leave entitlement, so it is triggered by what your own policy already offers. Second, accommodation is a separate track: at 15 or more employees a medical condition may require reasonable accommodation, and a finite leave can be the accommodation even where the FMLA does not apply or has been exhausted. Third, jury service and voting are protected on their own terms and are not part of any leave bank. If you promise leave in a handbook, that promise is enforceable on its own terms whatever the statutes say, so write the policy you intend to follow (FMLA, 29 U.S.C. § 2601; Tex. Lab. Code §§ 21.0595 and 21.051; Tex. Lab. Code ch. 62 and Texas Ass'n of Business v. City of Austin on the preempted sick-leave ordinances).