Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2024 in the United States

Yes. It is one of the eleven legal public holidays set out in 5 U.S.C. § 6103. Federal offices close and federal employees receive the day off with pay.

It took until 2000 for all fifty states to observe it. South Carolina was the last, having previously offered employees a choice between this day and one of three Confederate holidays.

The holiday always falls on the third Monday in January, so its calendar date moves each year between January 15 and January 21.

Dr. King was born on January 15, 1929. The statute deliberately fixed the observance to a Monday rather than to his birth date, in line with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act pattern used for Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day and Columbus Day.

A bill to create the holiday was introduced four days after Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968 and was reintroduced in every Congress for fifteen years. A 1982 petition carrying six million signatures was delivered to the House.

President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law on November 2, 1983, and it was first observed on January 20, 1986. Congress later designated it a national day of service in the King Holiday and Service Act of 1994.