Colorado’s paid sick leave law, the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (HFWA), requires almost every employer in the state to provide paid sick time. You earn one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 48 hours a year, and you can start using it on your first day on the job.1Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave The law covers a wide range of reasons, from personal illness and preventive care to domestic violence situations and public health emergencies, and it protects you from retaliation for using the time.
Who Is Covered
The HFWA applies to private businesses of every size, plus state and local government agencies, counties, municipalities, and school districts. There is no small-business exemption; a two-person shop has the same obligations as a company with thousands of employees.2Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-402 – Definitions Full-time, part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers are all included.
Two groups sit outside the law. Federal government employees are excluded because the statute’s definition of “employer” omits the federal government, and certain railroad workers covered by the federal Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act are also excluded.3Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act Everyone else working in Colorado is covered.
How Much Leave You Earn
Accrual starts on your first day of work. No probationary period is allowed. You earn one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, up to a cap of 48 hours per benefit year.1Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave Someone working a standard 40-hour week accrues about 1.33 hours a week. You can use leave the moment you accrue it, so even in your first weeks any hours you’ve banked are available.
Salaried exempt employees who don’t track hours are assumed to work 40 hours a week for accrual purposes. If their regular schedule is shorter, accrual is based on that actual schedule.1Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave
Frontloading and PTO Policies
An employer doesn’t have to use hour-by-hour accrual. It can frontload the full 48 hours at the start of the benefit year.1Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave A combined paid-time-off policy can also satisfy the HFWA, but only if it provides at least 48 hours, covers all the same qualifying reasons, and imposes no stricter rules than the HFWA itself.4Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
Carryover, Rehire, and Leaving a Job
Unused leave doesn’t vanish at year’s end. Up to 48 hours of accrued time carries into the next benefit year, though your employer isn’t required to let you use more than 48 hours in any single year.1Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave If you leave a job and are rehired within six months, your previous balance must be reinstated. Employers aren’t required to pay out unused sick leave when you separate, which is one area where sick leave differs from earned vacation pay in Colorado.
What You Can Use Leave For
The HFWA covers seven categories of qualifying absences.
- Personal illness or injury, including any mental or physical health condition that prevents you from working, and recovery time.
- Preventive care and treatment, including doctor visits, vaccinations, diagnoses, and ongoing treatment.
- Caring for a family member who needs medical attention, a diagnosis, or help with any of the situations listed here.
- Domestic violence, sexual assault, or harassment, for medical attention, counseling, legal help, victim services, or relocation.
- Public health emergency closures of your workplace or your child’s school or daycare.
- Bereavement, including grieving, funeral arrangements, and handling financial or legal matters after a family member’s death.
- Unexpected events, including inclement weather, a power or water outage, or another disruption that forces you to evacuate or care for a family member whose school or daycare has closed.
The bereavement and unexpected-event categories are the ones workers most often overlook. Many people don’t realize HFWA leave is available after a family member’s death or when a blizzard knocks out power and closes schools.
Who Counts as a Family Member
Colorado’s definition of family member reaches further than most people assume. It includes immediate family (spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild), anyone who stood in a parental role to you when you were a minor, any child you serve in a parental role for, and anyone you are responsible for providing or arranging health or safety care for.2Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-402 – Definitions That last category can cover an elderly neighbor you’ve been caring for or a close friend with a serious health condition, so long as you’re genuinely responsible for their care.
How You’re Paid During Leave
You’re paid at your normal rate. That means your regular hourly wage or salary, including shift differentials, tip credits, and commissions. It does not include overtime, discretionary bonuses, or holiday pay.3Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
A few special rules apply depending on how you’re paid. Tipped employees who normally earn below the full minimum wage (with tips filling the gap) must be paid the full minimum wage during leave, since they won’t be earning tips. Commissioned employees are paid based on their base hourly or salary rate, or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher; commissions on top of a base rate aren’t included. If your pay varies week to week or you don’t have a set hourly rate, your leave pay is calculated from your average earnings over the 30 calendar days before the leave.
Whichever method applies, HFWA leave pay can never drop below Colorado’s applicable minimum wage.
How to Request Leave
For a planned absence, like a scheduled surgery or procedure, give your employer at least seven days’ notice.3Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act For a sudden need, like waking up with the flu or a family emergency, you just need to notify your employer as soon as you practically can. Your employer can set a written procedure for how to give notice, but it can’t deny leave just because you didn’t follow that procedure perfectly.6Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Colorado Workplace Public Health Rights Poster – Paid Leave, Whistleblowing, and Protective Equipment
Documentation rules are narrow. Your employer can ask for verification only if you were out for four or more consecutive workdays (scheduled workdays, not calendar days).6Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Colorado Workplace Public Health Rights Poster – Paid Leave, Whistleblowing, and Protective Equipment For shorter absences, your word is enough. Even when documentation is required, your employer can’t ask about your diagnosis, symptoms, or treatment, only whether the absence qualified under the HFWA.3Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
Your employer can also require you to take leave in one-hour blocks, or allow smaller ones. If it doesn’t specify a minimum in writing, the default increment is six minutes, one-tenth of an hour.3Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act That matters if you only need to duck out for a quick appointment: you shouldn’t have to burn a full hour for a 20-minute visit. Your employer also can’t require you to find a replacement worker to cover your shift as a condition of taking leave.7Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-404 – Use of Paid Sick Leave
Public Health Emergency Leave
During a declared public health emergency, the HFWA goes well beyond the standard 48-hour bank. Your employer must supplement your remaining accrued leave so you have up to 80 total hours available. If you’ve already used 20 accrued hours that year, your employer adds 60 supplemental hours to bring you to 80.4Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
Part-time workers don’t automatically get the full 80. They’re entitled to the greater of the hours they were scheduled to work in the 14 days after their leave request, or the hours they actually worked in the 14 days before the emergency was declared or the leave was requested. A public health emergency includes a pandemic, infectious disease outbreak, or other disaster emergency declared by the Governor or a federal, state, or local health agency. The supplemental leave stays available until four weeks after the emergency officially ends.
Protection Against Retaliation
It’s illegal for an employer to punish you for using HFWA leave. The law defines retaliation broadly: firing, suspension, demotion, reduced hours, threats, and any other adverse action taken because you exercised your rights.8Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act Employers also can’t count HFWA absences as “occurrences” or “points” in an attendance-based discipline system.4Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act That’s a common workaround, where an employer technically allows the leave but dings your attendance record anyway; the law treats that as interference.
The protection extends to anyone who participates in an HFWA investigation. If you file a complaint, testify for a coworker, or cooperate with the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics, your employer can’t retaliate for that either.
If Your Employer Violates the Law
If your employer denies your leave, retaliates against you, or fails to pay you properly, you can file a complaint with the Colorado Division of Labor Standards and Statistics. Penalties depend on whether the violation was willful. For a non-willful violation, the employer owes the unpaid wages plus a penalty of double the wages owed or $1,000, whichever is greater. For a willful violation, the penalty rises to triple the wages owed or $3,000, whichever is greater.9Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 2B – Orders of Wages, Penalties, Fines, and Consequences for Non-Compliance
On top of what’s owed to you, the state can impose fines of up to $50 per day from the date wages were originally due, and further fines apply when employers ignore Division orders or fail to produce pay statements.9Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 2B – Orders of Wages, Penalties, Fines, and Consequences for Non-Compliance
HFWA Is Not FAMLI
Colorado has a separate paid leave program that’s easy to confuse with HFWA. The Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) program is funded through payroll premiums and provides up to 12 weeks of paid leave (with an additional 4 weeks for pregnancy complications) for more serious situations like a major health condition, the birth or adoption of a child, or a family member’s military deployment.10Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6C – How HFWA and FAMLI Relate HFWA is the short-term sick leave (up to 48 hours a year) covering the everyday reasons above. FAMLI is for longer disruptions like surgery recovery, a new baby, or caring for a parent with a serious diagnosis.
FAMLI has an eligibility threshold too: you need at least $2,500 in wages subject to FAMLI premiums before benefits are available, while HFWA coverage begins on day one with no earnings requirement.10Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6C – How HFWA and FAMLI Relate When a situation qualifies under both programs, you may be able to use them together, but the details depend on the circumstances and your employer’s policies.