California Employment Laws by Employer Size

On this page: Laws by headcount | Counting your employees

Laws by Headcount

Many California laws begin at a certain headcount, and the lines fall in different places: four, five, 10, 15, 16, 20, 25, 50, 75, and 100. A law that skips a business with 19 employees can reach one with 20. This page puts the common lines in one place.

This page lists the laws employers ask about most, and it is not a complete list. For example, it leaves out the federal wage law (the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA). It includes a few federal laws, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the federal COBRA health coverage law, and the federal WARN notice law, because they give separate rights or because they overlap with California law.

California and federal employment laws by employer size.

Your headcount	What applies to you
Any number of employees (one or more)	Whistleblower retaliation protection; paid sick leave; lactation break time; harassment protection under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA); jury, witness, and crime victim court-time protections; the ban on asking about salary history; pay scale on request; California’s equal pay law for sex, race, and ethnicity; a written injury and illness prevention program; a workplace violence prevention plan (unless an exemption applies); heat illness rules; CalSavers if you have eligible employees and no qualifying plan; work permits for minors; voting time off; state protections against immigration-related retaliation and unfair document practices; a human trafficking notice, if you run one of the business types the law lists, such as a bar, an adult business, an airport, a bus or rail station, a truck stop, an emergency room or urgent care center, a farm labor contractor, a job recruitment center, or a massage business
Four or more employees	The federal ban on citizenship-status and national-origin discrimination in hiring and firing (employers with three or fewer employees are excluded)
Five or more employees	FEHA discrimination and retaliation protection, including disability accommodation (the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and FEHA overlap, and Title VII and FEHA overlap; see the note below the table); the California Family Rights Act (CFRA); pregnancy disability leave; bereavement leave; reproductive loss leave; national-origin protection that includes holders of certain driver’s licenses
Fewer than 10 employees	Small-business flexibility in the injury and illness prevention program; an exemption from the workplace violence prevention plan for non-public workplaces with fewer than 10 employees present at one time, if you follow the injury and illness prevention rules
15 or more employees	Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin); the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); pay scale in every job posting; organ and bone marrow donor leave
16 or more employees (more than 15)	Civil Air Patrol leave
19 or fewer employees	Cal-COBRA, the state’s continued health coverage law for employers with two to 19 eligible employees
20 or more employees	Federal COBRA continued health coverage
25 or more employees	School and child care leave (at one location); leave for family members of crime victims; military spouse leave; alcohol and drug rehabilitation accommodation
50 or more employees	The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA); training leave for volunteer firefighters, reserve peace officers, and emergency rescue personnel
75 or more employees (at one facility)	Cal-WARN, the state’s advance-notice law for mass layoffs, relocations, and terminations (a facility that employs, or within the past 12 months employed, 75 or more persons)
100 or more employees	Federal WARN, the federal advance-notice law for plant closings and mass layoffs (100 or more employees, not counting part-time employees, or 100 or more employees who together work at least 4,000 hours a week, not counting overtime)

Title VII and the ADA apply to employers with 15 or more employees. In California, FEHA covers the same ground at a lower headcount (five), so for most California employers FEHA is the law that does the work, and many people use “Title VII” or “ADA” to mean both the federal law and FEHA. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e(b) (opens in a new tab), 12111(5)(A) (opens in a new tab); Cal. Gov’t Code § 12926(d) (opens in a new tab).

For more on these laws, see LOA and Disability, Wage and Hour and Pay Equity, and Discrimination Defense.

Counting Your Employees

For FEHA, part-time employees count the same as full-time employees, employees on approved leave count, and employees located outside California can count. Other laws count differently, and school and child care leave, for example, counts only the employees at one location. Cal. Code Regs. tit. 2, § 11008(d); Cal. Gov’t Code § 12926(d) (opens in a new tab).

Cal-WARN counts the persons a facility employs now or has employed in the past 12 months, and federal WARN does not count part-time employees, meaning employees who average fewer than 20 hours a week or have worked fewer than six of the past 12 months. Cal. Lab. Code § 1400.5 (opens in a new tab); 29 U.S.C. § 2101(a)(1), (8) (opens in a new tab). For when each law requires notice, see Reductions in Force, Layoffs, and Furloughs.

When to Contact Us

If this or other issues arise in your workplace, including a headcount close to one of these lines, contact Michael Trust Law, APC for help with resolving them or for a compliance review.

If your business has an employment matter that needs attention, contact Michael Trust Law, APC. That includes a lawsuit, a demand letter, or a letter or charge from an agency, where deadlines can be short, so please call or email right away. It also includes a compliance review, a handbook, a policy, or a workforce decision that you want done right the first time. A no-charge consultation is a first conversation about your own situation, and we will tell you whether and how we can help. Interpreting these laws for your business is legal work, and we do it as part of an engagement.

No attorney-client relationship exists until a fee agreement is fully executed by all parties. See Disclaimers.

Cal. Gov’t Code §§ 12926 (opens in a new tab), 12940 (opens in a new tab), 12945 (opens in a new tab), 12945.2 (opens in a new tab), 12945.6 (opens in a new tab), 12945.7 (opens in a new tab), 12945.8 (opens in a new tab), 100032 (opens in a new tab); Cal. Lab. Code §§ 98.6 (opens in a new tab), 230.3 (opens in a new tab), 230.4 (opens in a new tab), 230.8 (opens in a new tab), 244 (opens in a new tab), 246 (opens in a new tab), 432.3 (opens in a new tab), 1019 (opens in a new tab), 1019.1 (opens in a new tab), 1025 (opens in a new tab), 1030 (opens in a new tab), 1102.5 (opens in a new tab), 1171.5 (opens in a new tab), 1197.5 (opens in a new tab), 1501 (opens in a new tab), 1509 (opens in a new tab); Cal. Civ. Code §§ 52.5 (opens in a new tab), 52.6 (opens in a new tab); Cal. Code Regs. tit. 2, §§ 11008, 11035; 29 U.S.C. §§ 1161 (opens in a new tab), 2611 (opens in a new tab); 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e(b) (opens in a new tab), 12111(5) (opens in a new tab); 8 U.S.C. § 1324b (opens in a new tab).