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June 24, 2026 · Benjamin J. Treger
The five-day standard, the mistakes that generate claims, and what changed this year.
Paid sick leave looks like one of the simplest obligations an employer has. Provide a few days, let employees use them when they are sick, move on. In practice, it is one of the most frequently mishandled areas of California employment law, and the errors tend to be quiet ones: a handbook that was never updated, a payroll setting that caps the wrong number, a manager who asks for a doctor's note he is not entitled to request.
None of those mistakes feels serious in the moment. The problem is that sick leave violations rarely stay isolated. They get bundled with other wage-and-hour claims and pursued on a class or representative basis, which is where a small accrual error becomes a meaningful number once it is multiplied across a workforce and several pay periods.
California also expanded the law again for 2026. If your policies were written for the old three-day standard, or even for the 2024 version, they are probably out of date. Here is what the law requires now, where employers get into trouble, and what changed this year.
California's paid sick leave law, the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act (Labor Code section 245 and following), is permanent and applies to essentially every employer in the state. If you have at least one employee in California, you are covered. There is no small-employer exemption.
Since January 1, 2024, when Senate Bill 616 took effect, the minimum has been five days or 40 hours per year, whichever is greater. That replaced the original three-day floor. The "whichever is greater" language matters: an employee who works ten-hour shifts is entitled to 50 hours, not 40, because five of his days exceed 40 hours.
Coverage is broad. Full-time, part-time, temporary, and seasonal employees all qualify once they have worked at least 30 days for you within a year in California. You may impose a 90-day waiting period before an employee uses any sick leave, but the time accrues from the first day of work.
Employees can use sick leave for their own illness, injury, or preventive care, and for the same needs of a family member. "Family member" is defined broadly: a child, parent, spouse, registered domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, or sibling, plus one designated person the employee may identify (you may limit that to one designated person per 12-month period). Sick leave also covers absences related to domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking, and, for agricultural workers, conditions such as extreme heat or smoke. Whatever the qualifying reason, the time is paid at the employee's regular rate of pay.
You have two ways to provide the leave, and most compliance problems start with getting one of them slightly wrong.
Under the standard accrual rule, employees earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, starting on day one. You may use a different accrual schedule as long as employees have at least 24 hours (three days) available by their 120th calendar day of employment and at least 40 hours (five days) by their 200th calendar day.
Accrued time carries over from year to year. You may cap the total accrued balance at 80 hours (ten days), and you may separately limit how much an employee uses in a single year to 40 hours (five days). Those are two different caps, and confusing them is a common error. The 80-hour figure limits how much sits in the bank; the 40-hour figure limits annual use.
Alternatively, you may deposit the full 40 hours (five days) at the start of each 12-month period. The advantage is administrative: if you frontload the full amount, you are not required to carry over unused time, and you avoid tracking accrual. For new hires, you still need to make 24 hours available by the 120th day and the remaining balance by the 200th day.
The trade-off is that frontloaded leave can all be taken at once, early in the year. If sick leave abuse is a concern in your workforce, accrual with carryover gives you more control, even though it is more work to administer.
| Accrual | Frontload | |
|---|---|---|
| How leave is provided | 1 hour per 30 hours worked | Full 40 hours / 5 days up front |
| Carryover required? | Yes (may cap the bank at 80 hours / 10 days) | No |
| Annual usage cap | 40 hours / 5 days | 40 hours / 5 days |
| Tracking burden | Higher (ongoing accrual) | Lower |
| Main risk | Carryover and cap errors | All leave taken early in the year |
Whichever method you choose, define your 12-month period clearly in writing, whether that is the calendar year, the fiscal year, or each employee's hire-date anniversary. Anniversary-date frontloading avoids the "double dip" that the calendar-year method can create for mid-year hires, but it is harder to administer across a large workforce.
Three administrative requirements catch employers who otherwise have a compliant policy on paper.
First, you must display the current Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act poster where employees can read it. The Labor Commissioner updated the poster for 2026 to reflect this year's changes, and the prior versions should come down. The poster must be available in English and in any language spoken by at least 5 percent of your workforce.
Second, non-exempt employees must receive the individualized Notice to Employee under Labor Code section 2810.5, which includes their sick leave information. If you previously provided less than the current five-day standard, employees need an updated notice.
Third, every pay period you must tell employees how much sick leave they have available, either on the itemized wage statement or in a separate writing provided with their pay. This is the requirement employers forget most often, usually because a payroll system was never configured to display the balance.
Finally, keep your records. The supporting documentation for hours worked and for sick leave accrued and used should be retained for at least three years.
Assuming a PTO policy automatically complies. A paid time off policy can satisfy the sick leave law, but only if it meets every requirement: accrual or frontloading, the caps, the permitted uses, and reinstatement. PTO also creates obligations that pure sick leave does not. Unlike sick leave, accrued PTO must be paid out at separation, and California's prohibition on "use it or lose it" vacation policies applies. Folding sick leave into PTO can simplify administration, but it does not simplify your exposure.
Failing to reinstate leave on rehire. If you rehire an employee within 12 months, you must restore his previously accrued and unused sick leave and allow immediate use. The one exception: if you used a PTO policy and paid the balance out at separation, you do not have to reinstate it. Employers who rehire seasonal or temporary workers without restoring balances create a clean, easily proven violation.
Asking for a doctor's note or the reason. For ordinary sick leave, you generally cannot require medical certification as a condition of use, and you cannot demand the diagnosis or the details of the condition. You may ask for reasonable advance notice when the need is foreseeable, but notice requirements cannot be used as a backdoor to deny leave. Managers are often the source of this error, asking "what's wrong?" or "bring a note," neither of which you are entitled to require here.
No-fault attendance policies that punish protected absences. Point-based attendance systems are a frequent trap. If an employee receives an attendance "point," a warning, or any discipline for an absence that was protected sick leave, that is a violation, and it is exactly the kind of policy that surfaces on a class-wide basis. Audit your attendance policy so that protected leave cannot count against employees.
Requiring employees to find their own replacement. You cannot condition the use of sick leave on the employee finding someone to cover the shift. This still appears in older handbooks and informal shift-trade practices.
Overlooking local ordinances. State law is a floor, not a ceiling. Where a local ordinance is more generous, you must follow it. San Francisco, Los Angeles (both the city and unincorporated county), Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, Santa Monica, and San Diego all have their own sick leave ordinances, and several require more than the state minimum. Berkeley, for example, requires 48 hours for smaller employers and 72 hours for employers with 25 or more employees; Emeryville and Oakland use similar tiered structures; the City of Los Angeles requires 48 hours. The figures and the rules vary by city, so if you have employees in more than one jurisdiction, you need to apply the most generous applicable terms for each of them.
Retaliation, including the timing trap. You cannot discharge, demote, suspend, deny leave, or otherwise discriminate against an employee for requesting or using sick leave. California adds a sharp edge: the law creates a rebuttable presumption of unlawful retaliation if you take adverse action within 30 days of the employee's protected activity, such as using sick leave or complaining about a denial. That presumption shifts the burden to you. Before disciplining or terminating anyone who recently used sick leave, confirm and document a legitimate, independent reason.
The 2026 changes are about what sick leave can be used for, not how much you provide. Two bills, Assembly Bill 2499 (2024) and Assembly Bill 406 (2025), expanded the list of permitted uses, and the Labor Commissioner's January 2026 poster reflects them.
The expansions center on employees who are victims of crime or violence, or whose family members are. Beyond seeking medical care and safety relief, employees may now use paid sick leave to obtain protective orders and related relief and, as of January 1, 2026, to attend judicial proceedings connected to a qualifying violent or serious offense against the employee or a family member. That includes proceedings such as a post-arrest release decision, a plea, sentencing, or a post-conviction release decision. Some of these uses apply only to employers with 25 or more employees, and AB 2499 also relocated several of the victim-related protections into the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which changes how they are framed and enforced. Practically, this means your sick leave policy and your manager training should reflect that a valid request can now look very different from a traditional "I'm out sick" call.
One adjacent item worth flagging. The Workplace Know Your Rights Act (Senate Bill 294) is a separate obligation, not part of the sick leave law, but it lands on the same calendar. Beginning February 1, 2026, and annually after that, every California employer must give employees a stand-alone written notice covering workers' compensation, immigration-related protections, the right to organize, and constitutional rights when interacting with law enforcement at work. A related requirement to let employees designate an emergency contact in case of arrest or detention took effect by March 30, 2026, and the Labor Commissioner has published a model notice. If you are already updating your sick leave poster and onboarding packet, this is the moment to add the Know Your Rights notice to the same workflow.
It is worth being clear-eyed about the actual risk. The sick leave statute is enforced by the Labor Commissioner and the Attorney General, and it does not, by its terms, give employees a stand-alone private right of action to sue for the leave itself. The direct penalties are modest: a willful posting violation runs up to $100, and withheld sick leave is recoverable at three times the dollar value or $250, whichever is greater, capped at $4,000. The statute also includes a safe harbor, so an isolated, unintentional payroll or clerical error generally will not trigger penalties.
That modest-sounding framework is misleading, for two reasons. First, sick leave compliance failures almost never travel alone. They are packaged with other Labor Code claims, with recordkeeping and wage statement issues, and pursued through PAGA representative actions, where penalties accrue per employee and per pay period and add up quickly across a workforce. Second, the retaliation exposure is real and separate. A retaliation claim built on a sick leave denial or a poorly timed termination is not subject to the $4,000 cap and carries its own damages and fee-shifting.
In other words, the danger is not the headline penalty number. It is the multiplication and the bundling.
If you do nothing else this quarter, run through this list:
Paid sick leave is the kind of obligation that is cheap to get right and expensive to get wrong. A short policy review now, before a claim forces the issue, is the better trade.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult with a qualified employment attorney about your specific situation.