San Francisco Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance: Requests and Appeals

The San Francisco Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance gives employees with caregiving responsibilities the right to formally request a flexible or predictable work schedule, and it requires their employer to take that request seriously: meet with them, consider the proposal, and put any denial in writing with a specific business reason.¹ The law does not promise that every request will be approved. It promises a process.

Who Can Make a Request

You qualify if you meet two employment conditions and have a qualifying caregiving relationship.

On the employment side, you need to regularly work at least eight hours per week inside San Francisco’s geographic boundaries, and telework from a home office in the city counts toward that threshold. You also need at least six months of employment with the same employer, and those months do not have to be consecutive. Three months, a gap, and another three months with the same company adds up to the required six.²

On the caregiving side, you must be a primary contributor to the ongoing care of at least one of the following:

A child under 18, including biological, adopted, foster, and stepchildren, legal wards, or any child you’ve taken parental responsibility for.
A family member with a serious health condition, meaning an illness, injury, or condition involving inpatient care or continuing treatment by a health care provider.
A family member aged 65 or older.

If any of those apply, the ordinance protects your right to start the request process.²

Which Employers Have to Comply

Any public, private, or nonprofit employer with 20 or more employees is covered, regardless of where those employees work. A company with 15 workers in San Francisco and 10 elsewhere still meets the threshold. When headcount moves around, the employer is covered whenever it averaged 20 or more employees performing paid work per week during the previous calendar quarter. The City and County of San Francisco is itself a covered employer, but the state government, the federal government, and other local governments are not.²

What You Can Ask For

The ordinance covers a broad range of changes, as long as the change is tied to your caregiving responsibilities. A request to change shifts simply because you prefer a different one, with no caregiving reason, falls outside the law.³

Within that limit, you can request:

Reduced hours, part-time or part-year work, or a job-sharing arrangement.
Different start and end times, variable or predictable hours, or a compressed workweek.
Telecommuting for part or all of the week.
Modified duties or responsibilities.
A locked-in, predictable schedule so you can plan around recurring obligations like school pickup or medical appointments.

How to Submit the Request

Put it in writing. The San Francisco Department of Human Resources publishes a standardized form that captures the required fields. On it, you specify the type of change you want, the date you want it to start, how long you expect to need it, and how it connects to your caregiving responsibilities. You may also need to submit a separate Verification of Caregiving Responsibilities form.⁴

Be concrete. If you need to leave by 3:00 p.m. every day for school pickup, say that, not just “earlier end time.” A specific proposal is easier for your employer to evaluate against its operational needs, and it narrows the room for a vague denial later.

Any approved arrangement lasts a maximum of 12 months. To keep it going past that, you file a renewal request on the same form.⁴

What Happens After You Submit

Once your employer receives a completed written request, two clocks start.

First, your employer must meet with you to discuss the proposal within 21 calendar days of receiving it. This is your chance to explain the situation and explore compromises if your original proposal creates operational issues. Second, within 21 calendar days after that meeting, the employer must issue a final written decision.

Neither clock starts if the request is incomplete. If sections are missing from the form, the employer can send it back and ask you to finish it before the timeline begins.²

When an Employer Can Say No

A denial has to rest on a legitimate business reason. The ordinance recognizes a defined set of them:

Identifiable cost, including lost productivity, retraining, hiring replacements, or transferring employees between locations.
Harm to the employer’s ability to meet customer or client demand.
An inability to reorganize work among other employees to cover the gap.
Insufficient work available during the hours you’ve proposed to work.

The denial must be in writing, must identify the specific business reason, and must tell you that you have the right to request reconsideration. A vague brush-off is not enough.⁵

Asking for Reconsideration

If your request is denied, you have 30 calendar days from the date of the denial to submit a written request for reconsideration.⁶ The employer then has 21 calendar days to schedule a new meeting and 14 calendar days after that meeting to issue a final written decision.²

Reconsideration is useful when circumstances have shifted or when you can offer a modified version of the original proposal. It also builds the paper trail you’ll want if you later file a complaint. Use the standard form again and mark the reconsideration option rather than filing as if it were a fresh request.

Retaliation Is Prohibited

Your employer cannot punish you for using the ordinance. Protected activities include making a request, seeking reconsideration, filing a complaint, cooperating with an investigation, telling coworkers about their rights, or opposing a policy that violates the law. Discharge, threats of discharge, demotion, suspension, and any other adverse action tied to your caregiver status or your use of the FFWO process are prohibited.¹

Timing matters. If something adverse happens at work shortly after you submit a request, that sequence is itself a warning sign worth documenting.

Filing a Complaint and What Penalties Apply

The San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement handles complaints under the FFWO. If OLSE finds a violation, it can order penalties of up to $50 per day for each day the violation continued, paid to each affected employee. If the actual cost of care you incurred because of the violation exceeds that daily amount, you can recover the higher figure instead.¹

Covered employers also have to post an official FFWO notice where employees can see it. A missing notice is itself a violation, and it’s a useful detail to flag if you end up filing a complaint, because it suggests the employer isn’t tracking its obligations.¹

How This Differs From FMLA and CFRA

The FFWO is not a leave law. It changes how and when you work; it doesn’t give you time off. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for qualifying reasons, including caring for a family member with a serious health condition, but FMLA requires 12 months of employment and at least 1,250 hours worked in the preceding year, which is a much higher bar than the FFWO’s eight hours per week.⁷

California’s family leave law, CFRA, offers similar leave protections at the state level but likewise doesn’t give you the right to reshape your ongoing schedule. The two systems solve different problems and often work in sequence: someone recovering from a family medical crisis might take FMLA or CFRA leave first, then file an FFWO request for a modified schedule when they return.

1
SF.gov. Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance
2
SF.gov. FFWO Rules
3
American Legal Publishing. San Francisco Labor and Employment Code SEC 32.4 – Right to a Flexible or Predictable Working Arrangement
4
Department of Human Resources. Request for Flexible or Predictable Working Arrangement Form Instructions
5
SF.gov. Family-Friendly Workplace Ordinance and Guidance
6
San Francisco Department of Human Resources. FFWO FAQs
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 28 – The Family and Medical Leave Act