How Does Leave of Absence Work in California: Pay, Rights, and Return

A leave of absence in California is time away from work that state law protects, meaning your employer generally must hold your job, keep your health insurance active, and let you return to the same or a comparable position when you come back. Most protected leave is unpaid at the employer’s end, but two state programs — State Disability Insurance and Paid Family Leave — replace 70 to 90 percent of your wages while you’re out, up to $1,765 a week for claims starting in 2026. Which law applies depends on why you’re taking leave, how long you’ve worked for the employer, and how many people the employer employs.

Reasons You Can Take a Protected Leave

The California Family Rights Act (CFRA) is the main job-protection law. It gives eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of unpaid leave in any 12-month period for:

Your own serious health condition that keeps you from doing your job
Caring for a family member with a serious health condition
Bonding with a new child after birth, adoption, or foster placement
A qualifying military exigency tied to a family member’s active duty or call to active duty

“Family member” is defined broadly and includes a child of any age, spouse, domestic partner, parent (including in-laws and stepparents), grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or a “designated person” you name. Your employer can limit you to one designated person per 12-month period.¹

CFRA leave does not have to be taken in one block. When medically necessary, you can take it intermittently or as a reduced work schedule, and the time still counts against your 12-week allotment.¹

Pregnancy Disability Leave

Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL) is separate from CFRA and stacks on top of it. If you are disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition, you can take up to four months of PDL, and then take up to 12 weeks of CFRA leave to bond with the child. A new parent recovering from a difficult pregnancy can end up with roughly seven months of job-protected time off.²

Bereavement Leave

Employers with five or more employees must grant up to five days of bereavement leave after the death of a spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, domestic partner, or parent-in-law. The days don’t have to be taken consecutively, but they must be used within three months of the death. The leave is unpaid by default, but your employer must let you use accrued vacation, sick time, or personal leave to get paid during it.³

Reproductive Loss Leave

A newer protection covers up to five days off after a miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoption, failed surrogacy, or unsuccessful assisted reproduction procedure. If more than one qualifying event happens in a 12-month period, the employer’s total obligation is capped at 20 days in that period.⁴

Other Short Protected Leaves

You cannot be penalized for jury service. If you don’t have enough time outside your shift to vote in a statewide election, you can take up to two hours of paid time off at the start or end of your shift.⁵ Victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and other serious crimes are entitled to leave for medical treatment, counseling, safety planning, and related legal proceedings.

Who Qualifies

CFRA and PDL both require that your employer have five or more employees. From there, the eligibility rules split.

For CFRA, you must have worked for the employer for more than 12 months and logged at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months before your leave starts. The 12 months don’t have to be consecutive, and 1,250 hours works out to roughly 24 hours a week for a year.⁶

PDL has no tenure or hours requirement. If your employer has five or more employees and a healthcare provider certifies a pregnancy-related disability, you qualify from your first day on the job.⁷

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) also gives 12 weeks, but only when the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles of your worksite; the 12-month and 1,250-hour tests apply too. When both FMLA and CFRA cover the same leave, they run concurrently, so you don’t stack them into 24 weeks.⁸

How to Request Leave

If your need for leave is foreseeable, give at least 30 days’ advance notice. For an unexpected illness or emergency, tell your employer as soon as you reasonably can. Notice can be written or verbal, but putting it in writing creates a record.⁹

You have to say enough about the situation for your employer to see that a specific law applies, but you do not have to share your diagnosis. Under California regulations, an employer cannot ask for one; you can share it voluntarily if you want to.¹⁰

Your employer can require medical certification from a healthcare provider. You have 15 calendar days to turn it in. If the certification is incomplete, the employer must tell you in writing what’s missing and give you a chance to fix it. If the employer has a good-faith, objective reason to doubt the certification, it can require a second opinion at its own expense.¹⁰

Getting Paid While You’re Off Work

Job-protected leave protects your position, not your paycheck. California fills the gap through two Employment Development Department (EDD) programs, both funded by an employee payroll deduction set at 1.3 percent of wages for 2026.¹¹

State Disability Insurance

If you can’t work because of your own non-work-related illness, injury, pregnancy, or surgery, State Disability Insurance (SDI) pays partial wages for up to 52 weeks. Benefits replace 70 to 90 percent of your wages depending on your income, capped at $1,765 per week for claims starting in 2026. Lower earners get the 90 percent rate; higher earners get 70 percent up to the weekly cap.¹²

SDI has a seven-day unpaid waiting period before benefits start. You can use accrued sick leave or vacation during that week to avoid a gap.¹³

Paid Family Leave

Paid Family Leave (PFL) pays up to eight weeks of benefits when you take time off to bond with a new child or care for a seriously ill family member. It uses the same benefit formula as SDI: 70 to 90 percent replacement, capped at $1,765 a week in 2026. PFL has no waiting period.¹⁴

Your employer cannot force you to burn through your vacation time before PFL benefits start. You can choose to use vacation to supplement PFL, but the choice is yours.

Health Insurance While You’re Out

During CFRA leave, your employer must keep your group health insurance in place at the same level and on the same terms as if you were still working, for up to 12 workweeks. That includes medical, dental, vision, mental health, and dependent coverage if your plan already includes those.¹⁵

PDL triggers its own health-coverage obligation, and time on PDL does not count against the 12 weeks owed under CFRA. So four months of PDL followed by 12 weeks of CFRA bonding leave means health benefits continue the whole way through. If the plan changes while you’re out, you get the new plan on the same terms as coworkers who stayed at work. Coverage lasts until your leave entitlement runs out, you clearly say you aren’t coming back, or you would have been laid off regardless of the leave.¹⁵

Coming Back to Your Job

When your leave ends, your employer must reinstate you to the same position or to a comparable one. Comparable means virtually identical pay, benefits, shift, working conditions, and geographic location. Moving you to a lower-paying role, cutting your previously approved schedule, or transferring you to a distant office as a way of punishing the leave is not allowed.⁶

There are limits. If your position would have been eliminated in a legitimate layoff even if you’d been at work, the employer doesn’t have to hold it. Employees hired for a specific term or project have no restoration right once that term ends. Your leave still counts toward seniority and longevity, so years of service continue to accrue.⁶

If You Need More Time Than CFRA Allows

Twelve weeks isn’t always enough. If a disability keeps you out longer, the Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act may require your employer to grant additional unpaid leave as a reasonable accommodation. The employer must go through an interactive process with you to decide whether the extension would create an undue hardship, and additional leave is considered reasonable when it will let you return to work at the end of the extended period.¹⁶

If your doctor says you need another month and your CFRA leave is spent, don’t assume resignation is your only option. Request the extra time in writing, submit updated medical documentation, and let the interactive process run.

If Your Employer Retaliates

California law makes it illegal for an employer to fire, demote, discipline, or otherwise retaliate against you for requesting or taking protected leave. That covers asking about your rights, submitting the request, taking the leave, and returning afterward.¹⁷

If you think your rights were violated, you can file a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department. You have up to three years from the date of the alleged violation. The department can investigate, try to resolve the matter, or issue a right-to-sue letter that lets you go to court. FMLA claims have a shorter federal window: generally two years, or three if the violation was willful.¹⁸

1
California Civil Rights Department. Family Care and Medical Leave: Quick Reference Guide
2
California Civil Rights Department. Leave for Pregnancy Disability and Child Bonding: Quick Reference Guide
3
California Civil Rights Department. Bereavement Leave AB 1949 FAQ
4
LegiScan. Bill Text: CA SB848
5
California Legislative Information. California Elections Code Section 14000
6
California Legislative Information. California Government Code Section 12945.2
7
California Civil Rights Department. Pregnancy Disability Leave Fact Sheet
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #28: The Family and Medical Leave Act
9
Department of Industrial Relations. Personal Leave of Absence
10
CalHR Human Resources Manual. 2107 – Family Medical Leave Act / California Family Rights Act
11
Employment Development Department. SDI Contribution Rate 2026
12
Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance and Paid Family Leave Weekly Benefit Amounts
13
Employment Development Department. Disability Insurance Claim Process
14
Employment Development Department. Paid Family Leave
15
Legal Information Institute. California Code of Regulations Title 2, Section 11092 – Terms of CFRA Leave
16
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act
17
Legal Information Institute. California Code of Regulations Title 2, Section 11094 – Retaliation and Protection
18
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Advisor