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An employee disabled by pregnancy working for an employer with five or more employees (or for most public employers, regardless of size) is entitled to pregnancy disability leave (PDL) and also may be entitled to up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected child bonding leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA).
Leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), covering employers with 50 or more employees, runs at the same time as PDL, but leave under CFRA does not. This means an employee could take four months of pregnancy disability leave, followed by 12 weeks of CFRA leave for child bonding, totaling nearly seven months of job-protected leave. This maximum can be taken only when an employee is actually disabled by her pregnancy for the maximum four months, and then immediately takes 12 weeks of child bonding leave.
The way PDL and CFRA interact could be confusing though as time off, whether paid or unpaid, is not considered hours worked for the purposes of the 1,250 hours worked requirements under the CFRA.
CFRA regulations, however, contemplated this scenario and have a special rule for establishing eligibility in this circumstance. If an employee who takes PDL then wants to take CFRA leave for child bonding immediately after PDL, the 12-month period during which the employee must have worked 1,250 hours is that period immediately preceding the employee’s first day of PDL, not the first day of the subsequent CFRA leave for child bonding.
So, if they had worked 1,250 hours preceding the date they first went on PDL leave, then they would be eligible for CFRA child bonding leave and the employer could not deny the request.
Read more about CFRA and FMLA Qualifying Reasons and Pregnancy Disability Leave in the HR Library.