A Work Injury Across State Lines: Which Rules Apply?

An employee hurt on the job in another state has no national rulebook to turn to. Workers' compensation runs state by state, so one fall can give several states a say. The National Council of Insurance Legislators, meeting in Boston on July 18, 2026, re-endorsed a 2005 template for sorting out those overlaps. It still says nothing about remote work. The gaps fall hardest on traveling crews and home-based staff, and on employers who assumed one policy covered everyone.

The state where the injury happened is the usual starting point. Many states will also take a case because the worker was hired there or usually works there, even when the accident was somewhere else. No federal statute ranks those states for most private-sector jobs, so the overlap stays.

Can a Worker Claim in Two States?

In January 1971, a Washington Gas Light employee hired in the District of Columbia hurt his back on a job in Arlington, Virginia. He collected a Virginia award of $62 a week, then went back to the District and asked for a supplemental award under its own law.

The Supreme Court sided with him. Writing for a four-justice plurality in Thomas v. Washington Gas Light Co. in 1980, Justice John Paul Stevens said full faith and credit does not stop a second state from adding an award. Virginia's payments were deducted from the District award, so no week of lost wages was paid twice.

That is forum shopping in the plain sense of the term. Washington Gas Light also sent him across the river to work. There is a reasonable case that the business choosing the travel should carry the cost of the richer system.

Medical bills keep arriving while two states and their insurers sort out who pays. A family health plan is a poor fallback, because group plans typically carve out injuries that happen at work. The split between workers' insurance coverage and an ordinary health policy exists for good reason, yet an employee waiting for two carriers to agree on which state applies can end up with bills neither will pay.

When the Policy Stays Home

Ohio is one of four states where workers' compensation runs through the state itself, with North Dakota, Washington and Wyoming making up the rest. Washington's guidance for out-of-state employers says plainly that private coverage is not allowed there, so a policy bought in Texas or Florida will not follow a crew into Spokane.

Those state funds generally leave out employer's liability insurance, the part of a standard policy that answers when an employee sues over the employer's negligence. Contractors heading to Ohio or Wyoming should ask their broker about stop-gap coverage before the first job starts.

Take a hypothetical Boise framing contractor that sends four carpenters to a six-week warehouse job in Spokane on a Monday in March. Idaho is one of eight states with a reciprocal agreement with Washington. The crew can work under the Idaho policy if the insurer confirms coverage and an extraterritorial coverage certificate reaches Washington's Department of Labor and Industries.

Now suppose one carpenter falls on day nine. The department rejects his claim and points him to the Idaho insurer. If that insurer refuses because the injury happened in Washington, the department's guidance makes the contractor liable for the unpaid premium, penalties, interest and claim costs. That is a large bill riding on one certificate.

Where Reciprocity Paperwork Tends to Fail

Reciprocity is narrower than its name suggests. Washington's agreements with Montana and Nevada exclude construction, and builders from states with no agreement must report construction workers to the department directly. Other visiting workers get no fixed day count, so Washington judges each case by the type of work and the worker's travel pattern.

Timing is where small contractors tend to slip. The Idaho Industrial Commission's extraterritorial coverage rules say requests from Idaho employers are not backdated or issued more than two weeks before work begins. The certificate also does not count as valid coverage until the other state approves it, so the practical move is to apply two weeks ahead and hold the crew until approval arrives.

Washington's own workers keep the right to file there when they are hurt in another state. Up to 30 days a year of outside work counts as temporary and incidental. For longer assignments, employers can apply for out-of-state supplemental reporting, which spares them Washington premium on hours insured elsewhere, though each state needs its own application every year.

Picking a Home State

Which state counts as home matters down to the first week of lost wages. Missouri Revised Statutes § 287.160 withholds benefits for the first three days of disability, then pays them retroactively once the disability passes 14 days. This magazine walked through that schedule in its guide to when Missouri workers' comp payments begin, and other states set their own waiting periods.

In July 2005 the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions drafted a model agreement for coordinating claims between states, and the National Council of Insurance Legislators has re-endorsed it every five years since 2006. The executive committee's Boston minutes show this year's renewal passing on a consent calendar without objection.

Under the model, a worker's home state is wherever they spent the majority of paid work days over the previous 12 months, and if no state clears that bar, the state of hire decides. The test looks reasonable and can usually be run from payroll records. Where an agreement built on the model applies, home-state law becomes the exclusive remedy, which can take back much of the choice Thomas gave workers in 1980.

The model does not cover a Spokane carpenter whom the Boise contractor hires locally, and an employer with workers from both states needs coverage in both. It leaves the day limits for temporary work blank, even though its own drafting notes say fixed limits may reduce litigation. It never mentions telecommuting.

Re-endorsing that text unchanged in 2026 looks less like an oversight than a choice to keep the status quo. On the five-year cycle NCOIL has followed since 2006, the next review would fall in 2031.

Remote Staff Across a State Line

The exposure is sizable. Nearly 22 percent of U.S. workers worked from home at least some of the time in 2025, a Minneapolis Fed analysis of Current Population Survey data found. The figure does not say how many of them live across a state line from their employer.

Washington treats a teleworker as based where they live, and one Washington-based employee is enough to require a Washington account. A Portland company with a single analyst working from a spare room in Vancouver, Washington, needs that account for her, whatever its Oregon policy says.

In California, Edward Morgan of Downtown LA Law Group argued in these pages that the state's system can reach injuries remote employees suffer at home when they are doing the job. He noted that home injuries often rest on self-reporting, which makes documented work hours and a defined home workspace worth putting in writing.

Until legislators take up remote work, a payroll field showing each remote employee's work state, checked against the policy, is probably the cheapest protection.

What Should Lawyers Check Before Filing?

For a claimant's lawyer, the first question on a cross-border file is often about geography. Part of what a workers' compensation lawyer does is choose the forum, and on these files that starts with listing every state with a connection to the injury. The next check is whether a reciprocal agreement makes one state's law exclusive, because that can rule out a later supplemental award.

Railroad injury claims run under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, which requires proof that the railroad was negligent. Shipyard and dock crews may claim under the federal Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act. The Court ruled in Sun Ship v. Pennsylvania on June 23, 1980, four days before Thomas, that states can still apply their own compensation law to land-based injuries the federal act covers. For a shipyard client, that can mean two benefit systems to compare before choosing where to file.

Before the Next Out-of-State Assignment

Renewal is the time to close coverage gaps, well before anyone gets hurt. A broker who sees every state where staff worked last year can spot a missing state or a monopolistic fund while the fix costs only premium. Reciprocity certificates come next, and they only help if they are approved before the crew travels.

Lawyers on either side do best by mapping every connected state at intake, while the choice of forum is still open. Remote work widened the problem, and the July vote left the template as it was. If a bookkeeper working from home in New Jersey for a company insured in Pennsylvania trips over a cable tomorrow morning, could anyone at that company say which state's law covers her before the first medical bill arrives?