New Legislation Seeks to Expand Leave of Absence Rights

Employers with 50 or more employees are currently covered by both the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and the federal Family and Medical Care Act (FMLA) which permits employees who have worked more than 1250 hours in the most recent 12 month period of time to take up to 12 weeks off for certain qualifying events.

Currently, the qualifying events include:

• The birth or placement of a child,
• To care for their own serious health condition,
• To care for their  child (up to 18 years of age or an adult dependent),
• To care for a parent (which includes a step parent and/or person who stands in loco parentis to the child), or spouse/domestic partner.

Legislation has recently passed the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee which would expand employees’ leave entitlements under the current California Family Rights Act (CFRA).  It is now being proposed that the CFRA leave entitlement be expanded to allow employees to take leave to care for siblings, parents in law, grandparents, and adult children.

If this new law passes, it would expand employee rights to take more time off. Currently, FMLA does not provide for leave to care for parents-in-law, siblings, and grandparents. So if this amendment passes, an employee who seeks leave for those purposes under CFRA, will not have exhausted their FMLA leave rights and the employee could take 12 additional weeks of leave.

Hopefully, this new legislation will not become law as it will further burden California employers by having to provide extended periods of leave time to their employees and guarantee that the employee will be reinstated upon expiration of the leave.