In Other States

Legislation has automatically granted expanded benefits to some workers who die of COVID-19:

• At the federal level, President Donald Trump in August 2020 signed into law a bill for first responders (police, fire, EMS, chaplains, corrections, probation, parole and judicial officers). The bill provides death, disability and education benefits to surviving relatives of a first responder who dies from COVID or complications, and presumes their infection to be a "personal injury in the line of duty."
• In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that presumes essential workers’ COVID-19 deaths between mid-March and July 2020 were from catching the virus on the job, according to the LA Times. "Essential workers" as defined in the bill included people who couldn’t work from home and had to venture out to work, such as grocery store workers and nurses, according to CalMatters. "In effect, the change shifts the burden of proof that typically falls on workers and instead requires companies or insurers to prove that the employees didn’t get sick at work," the newspaper reported.
• New York’s state legislature passed a similar bill in June 2020, requiring benefit providers to treat COVID-19 deaths as automatically work-related. This allows for the worker’s surviving relatives to receive the expanded benefits associated with a line-of-duty death. However, unlike Newsom’s order, the bill applied to public employees only.