DC Sick Leave Law: Accrual, Eligible Uses, and Penalties

The DC sick leave law, formally the Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act of 2008, lets you earn between three and seven paid days off per calendar year for illness, medical appointments, or safety-related absences, with the exact amount tied to your employer’s size. Leave starts accruing on your first day of work, and you can start using it once you have been on the job 90 days. The law is codified at D.C. Code § 32-531.01 through § 32-531.12, and it carries real financial penalties against employers who deny leave or retaliate against workers who take it.

How Much Paid Leave You Earn

Your accrual rate depends on how many full-time equivalent employees your employer had, on average, during the prior calendar year.¹

100 or more employees: one hour of paid leave for every 37 hours worked, capped at 7 days per year.
25 to 99 employees: one hour for every 43 hours worked, capped at 5 days per year.
24 or fewer employees: one hour for every 87 hours worked, capped at 3 days per year.

Part-time and full-time workers both accrue from day one. The hours just sit in your bank until you clear the 90-day waiting period.

Tipped Restaurant and Bar Workers

If you work at a restaurant or bar and regularly get tips or gratuities on top of a base wage below the DC minimum wage, you accrue at one hour per 43 hours worked, up to 5 days per year, regardless of how large your employer is. When you take that leave, your employer must pay you at the full DC minimum wage rate, not your tipped base.¹ Restaurant employers overlook this one often, and it changes the math on a sick day significantly.

Who Isn’t Covered

The Act covers people employed by an employer in the District of Columbia. A few categories fall outside it: independent contractors, unpaid volunteers at nonprofits or religious organizations, lay members performing religious functions, casual babysitters working in or around a private home, and full-time students who work for their own college or university fewer than 25 hours a week without replacing a covered employee.²

When You Can Start Using Leave

You can begin using accrued leave once you have completed 90 consecutive days of employment.¹ Hours you earned during those first 90 days do not disappear; they become available to use the moment you cross that threshold.

Employers do not have to pay out your unused balance when you leave a job. If the same employer rehires you within one year, though, your previously accrued leave is reinstated and you can use it immediately without serving another waiting period. After more than a year, the employer can treat you as a new hire.³

What You Can Use Leave For

The law covers two kinds of absences. Sick leave applies when you or a family member has a physical or mental illness, injury, or medical condition, or needs preventive care like a routine checkup or dental visit. Safe leave applies when you or a family member is a victim of domestic violence, sexual abuse, or stalking, and covers things like getting medical attention, obtaining counseling, working with a victim services organization, relocating for safety, or participating in related legal proceedings.¹

“Family member” is defined broadly. It includes your spouse or domestic partner, children (including foster children and grandchildren), parents, siblings, in-laws, and the spouses of your children or siblings. It also reaches anyone who has lived with you in a committed relationship for at least the preceding 12 months, as well as any child who lives with you and for whom you have permanently assumed parental responsibility.²

How to Request Leave

When you know in advance that you’ll need time off, give your employer at least 10 days’ notice, or as much notice as possible if 10 days isn’t realistic.⁴ A written request helps when leave is planned around a surgery, appointment, or court date.

For emergencies, you must notify your employer before the start of your next work shift or within 24 hours of the emergency, whichever comes first.⁴ The “whichever comes first” piece matters: if your shift begins eight hours after the emergency, the shift deadline controls, not the 24-hour window.

Your employer can ask for documentation only when your absence lasts three or more consecutive days, and only “reasonable certification.” A signed note from a licensed health care provider confirming the need for leave is enough for a medical absence. For safe leave, a police report, a court order, or a signed statement from a victim advocate or domestic violence counselor qualifies. You turn in the documentation when you return to work, not before.⁵

Any certification you hand over is confidential. Your employer cannot disclose it unless you consent, a court orders it, or federal or DC law requires disclosure.⁵

What Your Employer Cannot Do

Your employer cannot fire you, demote you, discipline you, or otherwise discriminate against you for using accrued paid leave. The protection extends further than taking the leave itself: your employer also cannot punish you for filing a complaint, cooperating with an investigation, or informing a coworker about rights under the Act.⁶

Point-based attendance systems commonly run afoul of the law. An attendance policy that assigns points, or counts an occurrence, when you call out using accrued sick leave violates the Act on its own.⁶

If your employer takes any adverse action against you within 90 days of your filing a complaint or exercising your rights, the law creates a rebuttable presumption that the employer violated the Act. The burden shifts to the employer to prove the action had nothing to do with your leave.⁶

Employers can still enforce policies against improper use of leave and can ask for more frequent certifications if there is evidence of a pattern of abuse.

Penalties When an Employer Breaks the Law

If your employer denies you accrued leave you are entitled to use, the employer owes you $500 in additional damages for each day of leave denied, on top of any wages you lost. That applies whether you came in anyway or took the day off unpaid.⁷

Willful violations carry civil penalties per affected employee: $1,000 for a first offense, $1,500 for a second, and $2,000 for a third or subsequent offense.

A violating employer can also be ordered to pay back wages, reinstate you, pay compensatory and punitive damages, and cover reasonable attorney’s fees. The Mayor can revoke or suspend the employer’s business permits and licenses until the violation is corrected, and interest accrues on all amounts owed.⁷

How to File a Complaint

Complaints go to the DC Department of Employment Services (DOES), which the statute names as the agency that receives them.⁶ The DC Office of the Attorney General also enforces worker rights, including sick and safe leave, and can pursue violations on its own.

You can also file a civil lawsuit directly. If you prevail, the court can award back pay, reinstatement, compensatory and punitive damages, and attorney’s fees.⁷ Between the per-day damages and the fee-shifting, even small violations can produce meaningful recoveries.

Keep your own pay stubs and any written communications about leave requests. If a dispute arises over how much leave you had available, the employer carries the recordkeeping burden, but your own paper trail protects you.

Not the Same as DC Universal Paid Leave

Accrued sick and safe leave is a different program from the DC Universal Paid Leave Act (UPLA), codified at D.C. Code § 32-541.01 and following. The sick leave law gives you a modest bank of paid days from your employer for short absences. UPLA provides longer-term wage replacement benefits, funded through an employer-paid payroll tax and administered by the District government, for parental leave after the birth or placement of a child, family leave to care for a seriously ill family member, and medical leave for your own serious health condition.⁸

The two can work together. You might use accrued sick leave for a few days of flu but turn to UPLA for weeks of recovery from surgery or time with a newborn. If you also qualify for federal FMLA, the 12 weeks of FMLA job protection can run concurrently with UPLA benefits, so using one does not necessarily add to your total time off.

1
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-531.02 – Provision of Paid Leave
2
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-531.01 – Definitions
3
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code Subchapter III – Employee Sick Leave
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D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-531.03 – Notification
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D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-531.04 – Certification
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D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-531.08 – Prohibited Acts
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D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-531.12 – Enforcement and Penalties
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D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-541.01 – Definitions