38 | 2025 Cal-Peculiarities ©2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com care, participating in school-related activities and events, and addressing a school or child care provider emergency.100 “Child care provider or school emergency” includes a request that the child be picked up from school or child care, an attendance policy that prohibits the child from attending the school or licensed child care provider, behavioral or discipline problems, closure or unexpected unavailability of the school or child care provider (excluding planned holidays), or a natural disaster.101 Reasonable advance notice is required and an eight-hour per month limit applies to leave for non-emergency activities.102 Employers must not discriminate against an employee for taking time off for these activities.103 The law defines “parent” expansively to include a parent, guardian, stepparent, foster parent, or grandparent of—or a person who stands in loco parentis to—a child.104 2.11 Kin Care Leave Under the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act, all California employers must provide paid sick leave to all employees for their own or a family member’s illness, injury, and other specified reasons.105 (See § 2.14.) Meanwhile, under the “kin care” statute,106 employers also must permit employees to use in any calendar year the amount of sick leave that employees accrue during six months for the reasons specified under the California Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act, i.e., (1) for the diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition of, or preventive care for, an employee or the employee’s “family member” (a spouse, registered domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, parent, child, or designated person); and (2) for an employee who is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, for reasons related to same.107 Both “parent” and “child” are defined very broadly to cover all varieties—biological, adopted, foster, step, ward, or in loco parentis.108 For purposes of the California Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act, a “designated person” is defined as “a person identified by the employee at the time the employee requests paid sick days.”109 Accordingly, California employers are cautioned to broadly interpret who is considered a “family member” when addressing kin care requests.110 Kin Care calculation example. An employee who accrues six days of sick leave throughout a year may use up to three days of sick leave for kin care, while an employee who receives a grant of six sick days at the beginning of a year may use all six days of leave for kin care. In light of the paid sick leave law, which does not distinguish between time off for the employee’s own medical condition and time off to attend to a family member (each being a legitimate reason to use statutory paid sick time), the “kin care” rule has limited relevance. The rule applies practically only to grants of sick leave in excess of the statutory minimum of 40 hours (or five days) annually. (See § 2.14.1.) Employee’s right to designate paid sick leave as kin care. As of 2021, the designation of sick leave taken as kin care is at the sole discretion of the employee.111 For companies with absentee policies and paid sick grants that are more generous than the state mandate, the employee’s choice to designate paid sick as kin care (or alternatively to not do so), could affect the rate at which employees exercise protected leave and thereby determine if an absence to care for a sick family member is protected leave instead of a violation of an absentee policy. Accordingly, employers should await the authorization of the employee before designating an employee’s exercise of paid sick leave as kin care. PTO trap for unwary employers. Employers who provide paid time off (PTO) may unwittingly subject themselves to additional kin care requirements, as PTO (personal time off that can be taken for any reason, including illness) can be considered a form of additional sick leave.112
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