Los Angeles Medical Leave Lawyer

Azadian Law Group, PC regularly represents clients throughout Los Angeles, CA, who are wrongfully denied medical leave or retaliated against due to taking medical leave from work.

Los Angeles Medical Leave Employment Attorneys: The right to medical leave and knowing that you have a job to return to is an invaluable benefit for employees going through an already difficult and often painful experience. We understand how being denied medical leave or having that medical leave interfered with can harm the employee’s recovery. Employers often also discriminate and retaliate against employees for taking medical leave, which can cause severe financial issues, loss of medical coverage, and other negative consequences for employees and their families.

The employment lawyers at Azadian Law Group, PC, fight employers aggressively to make sure they secure the maximum recovery for employees whose rights to medical leave have been violated. The Los Angeles Medical Leave Employment Attorneys at Azadian Law Group, PC, have unparalleled experience in all aspects of employment law.

You can find a helpful brochure from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing regarding your rights to medical leave here.

A qualifying employee (who worked for his employer for 1,250 hours or more during the past year for a company with 50 or more employees) is protected by the California Family Rights Act and the federal Family Medical Leave Act (CFRA/FMLA). As of January 1, 2021, the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) does not require the employer to have 50 or more employees. Instead, the CFRA only requires the employer to have five or more employees.

Under these laws, an employee may be entitled to take up to three months of unpaid leave for:

• A serious health condition requiring inpatient care or continuing treatment.
• A serious health condition of a spouse, child, or parent.
• The birth of the employee’s child or the adoption of a child by the employee.

Employers are prohibited from discouraging or interfering with an eligible employee’s right to take CFRA/FMLA leave. Further, employers may not terminate or take other adverse action against an employee because the employee is taking such a leave. The employer may request a medical certification regarding the medical leave.

When an employee returns from medical leave, he or she should be returned to the same position and the same pay/benefits. See Cal. Code Regs. Tit. 2, § 11089(b) (“The employee is entitled to the same position or to a comparable position that is equivalent (i.e., virtually identical) to the employee’s former position in terms of pay, benefits, shift, schedule, geographic location, and working conditions, including privileges, perquisites, and status. The position must involve the same or substantially similar duties and responsibilities, which must entail substantially equivalent skill, effort, responsibility, and authority.”)

Retaliation For Taking Medical Leave Is Illegal

An employer cannot retaliate against you for requesting or taking CFRA/FMLA medical leave. To prove retaliation, the employee must show (1) the employer was an employer covered by CFRA/FMLA; (2) the employee was eligible to take CFRA/FMLA leave; (3) the employee exercised his or her right to take leave for a qualifying CFRA/FMLA purpose; and (4) the employee suffered an adverse employment action, such as termination, fine, or suspension because of the exercise of her right to CFRA/FMLA leave. See  Moore v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 248 Cal. App. 4th 216, 248 (2016).

The employee is protected even when the employee does not specifically request medical leave, even when the employer is aware of the employee’s need for medical leave. Moreover, although the Claimant did not directly request CFRA leave for a qualifying purpose (his ankle injury, which prevented the Claimant from performing his essential job duties), he exercised his right to take leave when prompted to do so by Ms. Essex. See  Moore v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 248 Cal. App. 4th 216, 248 (2016) (“The relevant questions with respect [to the third element] is not whether a plaintiff expressly requested CFRA leave, but, rather, whether a plaintiff ‘exercised her right to take leave’ and whether the purpose for the leave sought was a ‘qualifying CFRA purpose.’”)

You can find a helpful brochure from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing regarding your rights to medical leave here.

California's Paid Sick Leave Law May Provide Additional Protection

A lot of California employees have questions about whether they are permitted or should be paid for missing work due to illness, such as calling out with the cold or flu or taking a family member to the doctor. California’s Paid Sick Leave Law, The Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014, provides a number of protections for California employees.

California’s Paid Sick Leave Law applies to all employers with employees working in California, regardless of the employer’s size (there is no minimum number of employees, which the employer must have). The law also applies to part-time employees and even employees who are exempt from overtime. However, there are certain exclusions for union employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement that provides for paid sick time and paid time off (PTO) and in-home support service employees.

Under California’s Paid Sick Leave Law, all employees must accrue paid sick days (one hour per 30 hours worked, up to the cap of 48 hours/6 days). See  California Labor Code § 246 (b)(1); see also California Labor Code § 246(i). An employee cannot use his or her accrued sick days until 90 days of employment. See California Labor Code § 246(c).

The sick days can be used for the employee or the employee’s parent, child, spouse, or domestic partner (kin care). See California Labor Code § 245.5(c). The time off can be used for diagnosis or preventative care. See California Labor Code § 246.5 (a)(1).

Accrued sick leave time rolls over, but the employer can limit use to 24 hours/or three days in a year. An employer cannot take away accrued sick days (“use it or lose it” policies or not allowed). See California Labor Code § 246(d). An employer’s paid time off (PTO) or earned time off (ETO) policies may satisfy paid sick leave requirements. See California Labor Code § 245.5(a)(1); see also California Labor Code § 246(e).

If you are unsure how much sick leave time you have accrued, check your paystub as employee’s sick leave balances must be reported on paystubs. See California Labor Code § 246(i).

Unfortunately, the law does not expressly prohibit the employer from asking for a doctor’s note as a condition for taking a paid sick day. (Whether or not requiring a doctor’s note is permissible is still open to debate.)

If the need for sick leave is foreseeable, the employee must provide reasonable advance notice to the employer. If the need for sick leave is unforeseeable, then notice must be provided as “soon as practicable.”

It is illegal for an employer to retaliate against an employee for using accrued sick days or for complaining that the employer is not following the law regarding paid sick days. See California Labor Code § 246.5(c).

It is important to note that the law relating to paid sick leave is in addition to the protections against disability discrimination and the need to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees. Depending on the circumstances, such accommodations can include medical leave and extended medical.

Contact Our Paid Time Off Attorneys in Los Angeles, CA Today

Contact us for a free case evaluation. As we never charge our clients a penny out-of-pocket, you can rest assured that when we accept a case, we stand behind our clients 100% and will fight aggressively for their rights.