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Reproductive Loss Leave in California

Reproductive loss leave is its own right. It is not bereavement leave and it is not CFRA, though it can sit next to those leaves.

General education for California employees—not legal advice. Your facts and deadlines control. This is not a Workplace Rights Advocacy case result. It explains the Civil Rights Department workplace notice in plain English. It is not the poster and it is not a complete statement of every exception.

The events and the five days

Government Code § 12945.6 requires employers of five or more people, and public employers, to grant up to five days after a reproductive loss event. The employee must have been employed for at least 30 days. A reproductive loss event is the day, or the final day, of a failed adoption, failed surrogacy, miscarriage, stillbirth, or unsuccessful assisted reproduction. The definitions include a loss experienced by the employee, by a spouse or domestic partner, or by another person when the employee would have been a parent.

The days need not be consecutive. They are generally completed within three months of the event. If the employee is on pregnancy disability leave, CFRA, or another statutory leave when the event happens, or goes on that leave immediately afterward, the reproductive-loss days are completed within three months after that other leave ends. More than one event in a 12-month period does not require the employer to grant more than 20 days in that period.

Pay, privacy, and retaliation

The leave follows an existing applicable leave policy. If there is none, it may be unpaid, and the employee may use vacation, personal leave, accrued sick leave, or compensatory time off. The employer must keep the request and any information confidential. Retaliation for taking the leave, or for giving information about it in a proceeding, is unlawful. The right is separate from CFRA and from bereavement leave.

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