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The California Pregnancy Disability Leave Law, or “PDLL”, provides pregnant California workers up to sixteen (16) weeks of leave for pregnancy related disabilities.
Importantly, it also permits the use of those 16 weeks intermittently, so if you are disabled for a few hours by morning sickness, or complications prevent you from working for a particular day or week, that would be covered under the PDLL. The California Pregnancy Disability Leave Law also requires employers to reasonably accommodate pregnancy related disabilities, including permitting a pregnant worker to transfer temporarily to a less strenuous or dangerous position. Importantly, the California Pregnancy Disability Leave Law grants pregnant workers special treatment, rather than equal treatment. Under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Law an employer only needs to treat pregnancy related disabilities the same as non-pregnancy related disabilities, which means that some companies can deny pregnant workers a medical leave of absence if they don’t grant similar leaves of absence for other temporary disabilities. As a practical matter, this means that under federal law an employee disabled by pregnancy would have no guaranteed right to a protected medical leave of absence if the employer is not covered by FMLA or the employee is not eligible for FMLA. However, the California Pregnancy Disability Leave Law is different and more favorable. It guarantees pregnant workers up to 16 weeks of leave for pregnancy related disabilities regardless of whether the employer grants similar leaves for other temporary disabilities and regardless of whether the employee is FMLA eligible or not. Moreover, leave taken under California’s Pregnancy Disability Leave Law does not run concurrently with leave to which an employee is entitled under the California Family Rights Act, or “CFRA.” This means that a California employee may take 16 weeks of Pregnancy Disability Leave then another 12 weeks of CFRA leave to bond with her baby, or a total of 28 weeks of protected continuous leave for pregnancy disability and bonding. At the conclusion of one or both such leaves, the employer will be obligated to return the employee to their prior position or, if no longer available, to a comparable equivalent position.
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