Minnesota Mandates Meal and Work Breaks Starting January 1, 2026—With Automatic Penalties

Quick Hits

• The amended Minnesota Mandatory Meal Break and Mandatory Work Breaks laws provide that a meal break need not be paid (assuming employees receive the full thirty minutes uninterrupted) but work breaks must be paid at the employee’s regular rate of pay.
• The only exclusion from these requirements is collective bargaining agreements that provide for different meal and rest periods.
• An employer must pay an employee “an equal amount of liquidated damages” if employees are not allowed to take their break.

The Statutory Revisions—What We Know and What We Don’t (For Now)

The revisions to the statutes seem simple enough, but as applied in the real world, several questions remain. MNDOLI is not providing guidance with respect to how they will be interpreting the revisions but has indicated FAQs will be available on its website in the future.

Mandatory Meal Break

Minn. Stat. 177.254 (Mandatory Meal Break), as amended, provides: “An employer must allow each employee who is working for six or more consecutive hours a meal break of at least 30 minutes.”

What we know:

• Employees must be allowed to take an unpaid thirty-minute meal break if they work six hours or more.

What we don’t know:

• Whether employees may voluntarily waive the statutory right to such a meal break—and what “evidence” of the same is going to be sufficient to prove to MNDOLI that it was their choice. A fair reading seems to be that if they are “allowed” the time, they are not actually required to take it if they choose not to.
• Whether MNDOLI will interpret this law to mean a second meal break for someone scheduled to work a twelve-hour shift (or more). The statute itself uses the term “break” as singular—not plural—as its counterpart for “work breaks.” A fair reading here seems to be that it is one single meal break per shift over six hours.

Mandatory Work Breaks

Minn. Stat. 177.253 (Mandatory Work Breaks), as amended, provides: “An employer must allow each employee a rest break of at least 15 minutes or enough time to utilize the nearest convenient restroom, whichever is longer, within each four consecutive hours of work.”

What we know:

• After four hours of consecutive hours of work, an employee must be allowed a fifteen-minute paid rest break.

What we don’t know:

• Whether the thirty-minute (unpaid = not work time) meal break is considered to interrupt the “consecutive hours of work” calculation. Minn. Rules 5200.0120 specifically provides that, “[b]ona fide meal periods are not hours worked.”
  • EXAMPLE 1: An employee is scheduled to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is scheduled for lunch at 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. The employee has only worked 3.5 consecutive hours before lunch and thus would not be entitled to a rest break before lunch. If the employee resumed working at 12:30 p.m., would they then only be entitled to a rest break at 4:30 p.m., as only then would the employee have worked the required four hours of consecutive work? Or would the employee be entitled to two breaks (independent of the meal break) during this nine-hour scheduled shift?
  • EXAMPLE 2: An employee is scheduled to work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The employee takes lunch from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Would the employee be entitled to any rest breaks since the employee never worked four or more consecutive hours during that work shift?
• Whether an employee who is scheduled to work an eight-hour shift (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.), may waive the thirty-minute unpaid meal period and use the fifteen-minute paid rest period to eat a meal (and use the nearest restroom)—and what “proof” of that voluntary choice would MNDOLI require?

Liquidated Damages

Both statutes (as revised) provide that if such break is not allowed, “the employer is liable to the employee for the [rest][meal] break time that should have been allowed at the employee’s regular rate of pay, plus an additional equal amount as liquidated damages.”

What we know:

• The first version of the law provided this “remedy” but also stated the commissioner of labor and industry could assess a penalty of up to $1,000 per employee per day if the breaks were not provided. That has been removed—and the remaining language does not reference the commissioner assessing the liquidated damages.
• An employee is entitled to an equal amount of liquidated damages.

What we don’t know:

• What is the “equal amount”? If an employee was scheduled for a one-hour meal break that “should have been allowed” but was not due to business reasons, is the employee entitled to one hour of liquidated damages? Or only thirty minutes?
• How are the liquidated damages assessed/paid? If there is no language that the commissioner must assess the liquidated damages (like the language that was removed in the draft bill), is the employer required to essentially self-report and just pay it to the employee on its own accord?
• When would the liquidated damages be due if the employer must pay without MNDOLI action? Would the liquidated damages be considered “wages” under Minn. Stat. 181.101, and thus paid at least every regular payday?
• Whether the payment required is essentially double. Employees are normally paid if they are working. Yet the statute states that an employer is liable for the break time that should have been allowed plus an equal amount as damages. Would the damages be thirty minutes of extra pay, or one hour of extra pay—on top of the normal hourly wage for working?
• How are such payments to be reflected on an employee’s earnings statement (payroll)?
• Are the liquidated damages taxable as W-2 wages?

Key Takeaways

Employers may want to consider amending their current handbooks and/or policies by January 1, 2026, to reflect these break period changes.

Employers may want to update timekeeping systems, policies, and procedures to account for a meal break waiver for employees to sign/acknowledge if they choose to voluntarily waive their meal period for their own personal reason (e.g., work through lunch and leave early).

Ogletree Deakins’ Minneapolis office and Wage and Hour Practice Group will continue to monitor developments and will provide updates on the Minnesota and Wage and Hour blogs as additional information becomes available.

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