The gap between "a bill exists" and "a law exists"
Nine states have a signed, confirmed earned-wage-access law on the books (we wrote about those twelve bills on 18 October). The other 28 states with at least one confirmed EWA bill are still in process — some with a single bill introduced once, some with years of repeated attempts, and at least one with a dozen bills moving at the same time. None of the 28 has reached a governor's signature yet.
That is not the same statement as "nothing is happening" in those 28 states. It is the statement that matters most for a compliance calendar: a bill in committee creates no obligation today, but it is the clearest signal of what obligation might arrive next, and how much notice you are likely to get.
Michigan: the largest active package
Michigan currently has 12 confirmed EWA bills active in the 2025-2026 session, all tied to a single bill, HB 5558, which would create a new Michigan Earned Wage Access Services Act. The other 11 — HB 5559 through HB 5569 — are coordinated amendments to existing Michigan statutes (collection practices, money transmission, criminal usury, wage and hour law, and more) that only take effect if HB 5558 passes; the legislature's own record shows each one carrying a "tie bar" to HB 5558. As of the most recent action recorded, 30 April 2026, HB 5558 had a committee recommendation concurred in and the tie-barred bills were referred to second reading. Read Michigan HB 5558.
A 12-bill package like this is a useful tell: it means a state's legislature is not considering a single standalone EWA bill but rewriting several existing statutes at once to fit EWA into them. That is normally a sign the bill has real institutional backing, not that it is close to passing.
New Jersey and New York: multi-year, multi-session patterns
New Jersey has 11 confirmed EWA bills in our holdings, spanning sessions back to 2020, including two currently pending — S 3110 and A 1735, both introduced 13 January 2026 and both still in their first committee referral. Read New Jersey S 3110. New York has 11 confirmed bills going back even further, to a 2020 Assembly bill on "on-demand pay providers," with its most recent attempt, A 682, having its enacting clause stricken on 5 February 2026 — a procedural dead end for that specific bill, though the pattern of repeated reintroduction across six years suggests the subject keeps coming back. Read New York A 682.
Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas: repeat attempts, same result so far
Missouri has 5 confirmed EWA bills since 2023 with none enacted; the most recent, HB 1113, was referred to the Emerging Issues committee on 15 May 2025. Read Missouri HB 1113. Oklahoma has 5 confirmed bills, including SB 1469, placed on General Order on 26 February 2026. Read Oklahoma SB 1469. Texas has 6 confirmed bills since 2023, with its most recent attempt, HB 2043, returned to the Calendars Committee on 29 April 2025 without a floor vote recorded in our holdings. Read Texas HB 2043.
What repeated, unenacted activity tells a compliance reader
A bill that returns across multiple sessions with the same subject and similar language is a state that has not dropped the issue — it has not yet found a version its legislature will pass. For a payroll platform or EWA provider weighing where to expand, that is a different risk profile than a state with zero bills at all: it says "watch this one," not "nothing to watch" and not "something is already required."