by Michelle Barrett Falconer, Littler
California’s family and medical leave laws are broad, interrelated, and frequently updated, making compliance a central responsibility for HR professionals, people managers, and payroll teams. Our comprehensive guide provides an in‑depth review of California family and medical leave requirements, helping employers navigate their obligations with clarity and confidence.
Our guide covers key leave laws, including unpaid leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), pregnancy disability leave and pregnancy accommodations, paid family leave benefits, kin care leave, and family military leave. It explains employer coverage, employee eligibility, qualifying reasons for leave, length of leave, intermittent and reduced schedule leave, and how to measure leave periods. Detailed guidance on employee notice and certification, employer posting and notice requirements, compensation and benefits during leave, reinstatement rights, and prohibited actions supports compliant leave administration.
In addition, the guide explores how California leave laws interact with one another, with local ordinances, and with other state and federal laws, including state disability insurance and paid family leave coordination. Coverage of local requirements, such as San Francisco’s Paid Parental Leave Ordinance, and emerging developments—including paid family leave for a designated person—helps HR teams stay prepared for evolving obligations.
Whether you are administering leave requests, updating policies, or training managers, this resource serves as a practical reference for managing California family and medical leave compliance and reducing risk.
In this guide, learn about:
- Family and medical leave
- Same-sex marriage
- California Family Rights Act
- Covered employers
- Employee eligibility
- Purpose and length of leave
- Measuring the 12-month period
- Intermittent and reduced schedule leave
- Employer notice and posting requirements
- Employee notice requirements
- Employee certification requirements
- Compensation and benefits during leave
- Reinstatement
- Prohibited actions
- Interaction with other laws and policies
- Pregnancy disability leave and pregnancy accommodation
- Length of leave
- Compensation and benefits during leave
- Pregnancy accommodations and transfers
- Employee notice and certification requirements
- Employer notice requirements
- Reinstatement
- Prohibited actions
- State disability insurance
- Paid family leave
- Covered employers
- Employee eligibility
- Qualifying reasons for leave
- Benefit amounts
- Employer notice and posting requirements
- Integration/coordination of benefits
- Interaction with other laws
- Kin care leave
- Family military leave
- Interaction of leave laws
- Local requirements
- San Francisco paid family leave (paid parental leave ordinance)
- Future developments
- Paid family leave allowed for a designated person
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About the author
Littler
Littler, the largest global employment and labor law practice, exclusively represents the global employer community in all aspects of employment and labor law. Littler litigates, mediates and negotiates some of the most influential employment law cases and labor contracts on record.
Littler’s practice areas are extensive and their expertise crosses over multiple industries and spans a wide array of employment law areas such as discrimination and harassment, labor management relations, executive compensation, ERISA and benefit plan litigation, leaves of absence and disability accommodation, hiring, performance management and termination, employment practices audits and wage and hour.
Littler is the exclusive author of Brightmine’s prestigious Employee Handbook. Their experience with preparing employee handbooks and their ongoing contributions to Brightmine in the areas of federal and state leaves of absence, disabilities and multistate employer issues made them a natural fit to partner with us on the creation of a robust set of model handbook policy statements and guidance for federal, state and key municipalities.
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