CFRA (California Family Rights Act)

The one-sentence answer

CFRA is California's family and medical leave law: up to 12 weeks per year of job-protected leave for an employee's own serious health condition, to care for a family member, or to bond with a new child.

It reaches far more employers than FMLA — 5 employees rather than 50 — and covers a much wider range of relatives. Whether it applies to the person you employ depends on how your FMS arrangement is set up.

The rules

• Up to 12 weeks per year for all CFRA purposes
• Applies to employers with 5 or more employees, and to public employers
• No geographic radius requirement, unlike FMLA's 50-within-75-miles test
• Employee eligibility: more than 12 months with the employer and 1,250 hours of service in the previous 12 months
• Administered by California's Civil Rights Department (formerly DFEH)

Who counts as family is unusually broad. CFRA covers leave to care for:

"a child of any age, spouse, domestic partner, parent, grandparent, grandchild, or sibling, or someone else with a blood or family-like relationship"

That last clause is doing a lot of work and is easy to miss. CFRA is not limited to a fixed list of relatives — a person with a family-like relationship can qualify. For caregivers, who often have complex and chosen family structures, this is materially wider than most employment leave laws.

Is the leave paid?

Job-protected is not the same as paid, and the two get conflated constantly. CFRA protects the job. Whether the employee receives money during the leave depends separately on:

• Accrued paid time off — they may use PTO or other accrued leave
• State Disability Insurance (SDI) or Paid Family Leave (PFL), if they qualify — these are state wage-replacement programs, not something you pay
• Otherwise, unpaid

Worth knowing as an employer: a caregiver taking CFRA leave may be able to draw California Paid Family Leave, which is funded through payroll contributions rather than by you. Job-protected leave is therefore often less financially alarming than it first sounds — you are protecting the job, not necessarily paying the wages.

Where CFRA and FMLA differ

	FMLA	CFRA
Employer threshold	50 employees	5 employees
Worksite test	50 within 75 miles	None
Covered relatives	Spouse, child, parent	Child of any age, spouse, domestic partner, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or a blood or family-like relationship

Because its thresholds are so much lower, CFRA is the more likely of the two to apply in any given arrangement. If you are asking your FMS only about FMLA, you are asking about the narrower law.

Where both apply, the Civil Rights Department's rule is that "the employee receives the benefit of the more protective law." Whether the two run concurrently or stack is not stated in the guidance we have, so this entry does not claim 12 weeks or 24 — confirm it with your FMS or an employment attorney in a live situation.

Whether it applies to you depends on your FMS

In Self-Determination, who counts as the employer depends on your model, and that determines whose headcount is measured. Under Sole Employer you are the employer — and note that CFRA's 5-employee threshold is low enough to be worth actually checking rather than assuming past. Under Co-Employer your FMS is a co-employer alongside you and the analysis differs. Under Bill Payer you are not employing anyone.

Ask your FMS: "Under our arrangement, do FMLA and CFRA apply to the person I employ?"

For the detail-oriented

Source: California Civil Rights Department, Family Care and Medical Leave: Quick Reference Guide, https://calcivilrights.ca.gov/employment/family-care-medical-leave-guide/.

This entry states the rules and does not assert whether they apply to any particular SDP arrangement — that is a joint-employer question specific to the FMS involved, and a blanket answer would be wrong for many readers either way.

This entry is information, not legal advice.