Today, thanks to the efforts of local advocates led by the NJ Time to Care Coalition, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed into law dramatic improvements to New Jersey’s paid family leave law. The law doubles the length of paid family leave available to 12 weeks, increases the average weekly benefit to $859 from $632, improves supports for domestic violence survivors and their families, and more.

One of the most exciting policy advances is that the bill updates the definition of “family” to people who “have a close association with the employee which is the equivalent of a family relationship,” making New Jersey the first state in the nation to extend paid family leave benefits to chosen family. This new law will particularly improve the economic security of workers who are LGBTQ or who have a disability, as these workers are most likely to be forced to make the impossible choice between caring for a chosen family member and taking home a paycheck.

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New Jersey’s victory is standing on the shoulders of decades of legal precedent. The U.S. government first recognized chosen family during Vietnam, allowing federal workers to take leave for the funerals of loved ones killed in combat if those people had “a close association with the employee … equivalent to a family relationship.” More federal benefits incorporated this definition in the 1990s, and in the last few years a host of states and localities, such as Arizona, Chicago, and Austin, have passed paid sick time laws that are inclusive of chosen family.

What is chosen family anyway? Simply put, it’s those people in your life you would do anything for. For me, one of those people is my college roommate, Diana. When my mom had a potentially fatal cerebral hemorrhage the month before finals our senior year, Diana dropped everything and drove with me nine hours to the hospital. When Diana’s son was born prematurely at just 24 weeks, I took time off work to help support her and her family. Diana and I have been family for more than 20 years — longer than I’ve known my husband, my stepmother, or any of my nieces and nephews — but until now no state in the country would have let us take paid family leave to take care of each other.

And Diana and I aren’t alone — millions of people across the country have an elderly neighbor who is more like a grandmother or a battle buddy they served with in the military. In fact, research Laura Durso and I conducted shows nearly one in three Americans have taken time off work to care for chosen family. While caring for chosen family is a shared experience, it is especially common among LGBTQ workers and workers with disabilities, due in part to family rejection, making this advance particularly important for those communities.

While this bill makes New Jersey a trailblazer on paid family leave and chosen family, this is the latest step for the movement to increase recognition of the importance of supporting diverse family structures in legislation. Historically, of course, diverse families have always existed, but the law has at best ignored them and at worst actively harmed them, from denying cash benefits to unmarried mothers to defining marriage as a union limited to one man and one woman. While harmful family policies still exist, increasing legal recognition of chosen family is a bright light.

Of course, these legal changes were not happening in a vacuum. In the media, chosen family rose to the spotlight as the name of Noreen Stevens’ cartoon about Canadian lesbians and their loved ones, and is in evidence today on FX’s award-winning Pose, about New York City ball culture, as well as in media that isn’t queer-specific. (X-Men or Fast and the Furious, anyone?) And more to the point, it’s the reality of people’s lives, perhaps made most painfully, tragically clear during the height of the AIDS epidemic, when chosen family were denied visitation rights in hospitals despite their family-like relationships.

New Jersey has made a great start. Who’s next?