Colorado Sick Leave Law: Accrual, Covered Uses, and HFWA Rules

Colorado’s sick leave law, the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (HFWA), gives every employee in the state paid sick leave at a rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked, up to 48 hours per year, usable from your first day on the job.¹ You can use that time for your own illness or medical care, to care for a family member, for bereavement, for issues tied to domestic abuse or sexual assault, and during a declared public health emergency, when a separate rule unlocks up to 80 hours of leave.

Who the Law Covers

HFWA applies to every private and public employer operating in Colorado, from a single-employee business to the largest corporation. The old carve-out for employers with 15 or fewer workers ended in 2022.² Part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees are all covered. The main exceptions are federal government employees and certain railroad workers who fall under separate federal regulations.

How Much Leave You Earn

You begin accruing paid sick leave on your first day of work and can use the hours as soon as you earn them.¹ The rate is one hour for every 30 hours worked, and employers can cap annual accrual at 48 hours.

Some employers skip the hour-by-hour tracking and frontload the full 48 hours at the start of the benefit year. If yours does, the whole bank is available immediately.²

Unused hours carry forward to the next year, up to a 48-hour cap on your balance. Even if you walk into the new year with a full carryover plus fresh accrual, your employer is not required to let you use more than 48 hours in any single year.¹ The carryover still matters, since it gives you a cushion in January before new hours have accumulated.

Your employer can also meet HFWA’s requirements through a general PTO policy, as long as it accrues at the same rate or better, provides at least 48 hours per year, and lets you use the time for every HFWA purpose under the same conditions.²

What You Can Use Sick Leave For

HFWA covers a wider set of reasons than many people realize.

Your Own Health

You can use leave when you’re sick or injured, when you have a medical appointment, or when you’re getting preventive care such as a vaccination or a screening.³ Mental health conditions qualify on the same terms as physical ones.

Caring for a Family Member

You can take leave to care for a family member who is sick, injured, or needs medical or preventive care.³ “Family member” is defined broadly. It includes your immediate family, anyone who stood in a parental role for you (or vice versa), and any person whose health or safety care you’re responsible for arranging.⁴ That last category can reach people like an elderly neighbor or a close friend you actively look after.

Bereavement

When a family member dies, you can use your accrued hours to grieve, attend services, or handle the financial and legal matters that follow a death.³

Domestic Abuse, Sexual Assault, or Harassment

If you or a family member has experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault, or harassment, you can use leave to get medical attention, seek counseling, work with a victim services organization, consult with an attorney, or relocate to a safer situation.³

School and Child-Care Closures

If a public official closes your child’s school or place of care, you can use your regular accrued leave to stay home with them, even when no emergency has been declared.³

Extra Leave During a Public Health Emergency

HFWA has a separate, more generous provision that activates when a public health emergency is declared. On the date of the declaration, your employer must supplement your existing balance so you have access to at least 80 hours of paid sick leave if you normally work 40 or more hours per week.⁵ If you work fewer than 40 hours a week, you’re entitled to the greater of your scheduled hours or your actual average hours over the 14 days before the declaration.

Your employer can count your unused accrued hours toward the 80-hour total, so this is not necessarily 80 hours on top of what you already have. The supplemental leave stays available until four weeks after the emergency officially ends.⁵ You can use it to self-isolate, seek treatment for the illness driving the emergency, care for an affected family member, or comply with an order to stay home.

Requesting Leave and Documentation

When you know you’ll need leave in advance, give your employer as much notice as you reasonably can. When the need is unexpected, notify them as soon as reasonably possible. Your employer can set a written procedure for leave requests, but it cannot be complicated enough to discourage you from using your hours.

Employers may require leave to be taken in increments of one hour. If no minimum increment is specified in writing, you can use leave in blocks as small as six minutes.²

Your employer can request documentation such as a doctor’s note only if you’re out for four or more consecutive workdays. For shorter absences, your word is enough.⁶ Even when documentation is required, your employer cannot demand that it explain the nature of your illness or any detail of a domestic violence situation.

Protection From Retaliation

Your employer cannot retaliate against you for requesting or using paid sick leave, filing a complaint about a violation, or cooperating with an investigation.⁷ Retaliation covers obvious actions like firing or demotion, and also subtler moves like cutting your hours, threatening to report your immigration status, or disciplining you in ways that would not have happened without the leave.⁸

Health information you provide must be kept confidential, as must any details about domestic violence or sexual assault. When you return from leave, you’re entitled to your same position (or an equivalent one) with the same pay and benefits you had before.⁶

Unused Leave When You Leave the Job

Unlike vacation time, unused HFWA sick leave is not paid out when you quit, get fired, retire, or otherwise separate from the job.¹ The one exception: if retaliation by your employer prevented you from using leave you had earned, those unused hours can become part of the damages in a retaliation claim. Colorado law generally does require payout of accrued vacation at separation, so this is a point of frequent confusion. Sick leave is different.

How HFWA Fits With Colorado FAMLI

Colorado’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) program is a separate state-run insurance system that provides partial wage replacement for longer medical and family leaves. HFWA and FAMLI are independent, though they can overlap when you’re dealing with a qualifying situation.⁹

Your employer cannot require you to burn through HFWA sick leave before or during FAMLI leave. You may choose to use it to “top off” your FAMLI benefit so your total pay is closer to your usual wages. Topping off requires a written agreement, and the combined amount from FAMLI benefits and sick leave cannot exceed your average weekly wage.⁹

Filing a Complaint

If your employer denies you sick leave or retaliates against you, you have two options. You can file a complaint with the Colorado Division of Labor Standards and Statistics, or send a written demand directly to your employer. Either way, the employer has 14 days to respond.⁸ You must take one of these steps before filing a civil lawsuit.

If the matter isn’t resolved, you can file a civil action in district court within two years of the violation. Each denial of leave or retaliatory act counts as a separate violation, so the clock runs from the most recent incident. Successful claims can result in back pay, reinstatement, and additional damages.⁸

1
Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-403 – Paid Sick Leave – Accrual – Carry Forward to Subsequent Year – Comparable Leave Provided by Employer – No Payment for Unused Leave – Rules
2
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave Under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
3
Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-404 – Use of Paid Sick Leave – Purposes – Time Increments
4
Justia. Colorado Code 8-13.3-402 – Definitions
5
FindLaw. Colorado Code 8-13.3-405 – Supplemental Paid Sick Leave During a Public Health Emergency
6
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 6B – Paid Sick Leave Under the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
7
Colorado Division of Labor Standards and Statistics. Interpretive Notice and Formal Opinion 5A – Retaliation Protections
8
Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act
9
Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI). FAMLI and Other Types of Leave