California Expands Workers’ Rights to Protected Leave Under The California Family Rights Act

Posted on October 5, 2020 | Firm News

Recently, California’s Governor signed Senate Bill No. 1383 into law, which expands the protections afforded under the California Family Rights Act to more California workers. Prior to this change, the California Family Rights Act generally applied only to employers that employed 50 or more employees.  Therefore, workers employed at smaller companies were not afforded the same protections.

Thanks to this new Bill, the California Family Rights Act now applies to employers with 5 or more employees (instead of 50). The California Family Rights Act prohibits any employer with 5 or more employees from denying a request by an employee to take up to 12 workweeks of unpaid protected leave during any 12-month period to bond with a new child of the employee or to care for themselves or a child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, or domestic partner.

In addition, the California Family Rights Act (or CFRA for short) now requires an employer who employs both parents of a child to grant leave to each employee.

CFRA also prevents employers from denying a request by an employee to take up to 12 workweeks of unpaid protected leave during any 12-month period “due to a qualifying exigency related to the covered active duty or call to covered active duty of an employee’s spouse, domestic partner, child, or parent in the Armed Forces of the United States.”

To receive the benefits and protections provided by CFRA, a covered employee is defined “as an individual who has at least 1,250 hours of service with the employer during the previous 12-month period, unless otherwise provided.”