LOA and Disability

California employers face a tighter leave and accommodation framework than federal FMLA and ADA. CFRA applies at 5+ employees (not FMLA’s 50), and FEHA requires a documented interactive process before any adverse action involving disability.

This HR background often proves relevant to CFRA, PDL, and FEHA accommodation coordination, which is among the most failure-prone areas of California HR administration failure occur at the intake and interactive-process documentation stages.

California Leave and Disability Compliance — Employer Counsel

Most California employer-side leave and disability problems start with a federal-law assumption. CFRA covers employers with 5 or more employees, not FMLA’s 50 (Cal. Gov. Code §12945.2). FEHA’s definition of disability is broader than ADA’s, and FEHA requires a documented good-faith interactive process before any adverse action when a disability is at issue (Cal. Gov. Code §12940(m)-(n)). Pregnancy Disability Leave provides up to four months of separate, additional leave (Cal. Gov. Code §12945). Coordinating CFRA, PDL, FEHA accommodation, sick leave, and (where applicable) FMLA is one of the most failure-prone areas of California HR administration.

How We Approach Employer Leave and Disability Matters

Michael Trust draws on approximately 35,000 disability and leave-of-absence cases managed during his HR career to bring an operational rather than purely litigation-driven perspective: leave administration succeeds or fails based on documentation discipline, calendar tracking, return-to-work planning, and the quality of the interactive-process record. Most claims are preventable at the policy and process level. The California Legislature has expressly declared that FEHA’s disability protections are independent of and broader than those provided under the federal ADA (Cal. Gov. Code §12926.1(c)).

Undue Hardship: A Limit on the Duty to Reasonably Accommodate a Disability

This defense applies only to a request to reasonably accommodate a disability; it has nothing to do with leave entitlements like Kin Care. Both the ADA and FEHA excuse an employer from providing an accommodation that would impose an undue hardship: significant difficulty or expense, weighed against the cost of the accommodation, the employer’s size, and the nature of its operations. The two laws are not identical, though. California’s Legislature has expressly found that FEHA’s disability protections are intended to be broader than the ADA’s, generally read to make this defense harder for a California employer to satisfy than the federal baseline alone. Undue hardship is an affirmative defense the employer must prove; generalized concerns about cost or inconvenience, without more, typically are not enough.

Cal. Gov. Code §12926(u); 42 U.S.C. §12111(10); Cal. Gov. Code §12926.1(c).

When to Contact Us

If your business is managing a complex leave or accommodation situation, or wants to audit current practices before a dispute, contact Michael Trust Law, APC.

Initial contact does not create an attorney-client relationship — see Disclaimers.

Cal. Gov. Code §12945.2 (CFRA); Cal. Gov. Code §12945 (PDL); Cal. Gov. Code §12940(m)-(n) (FEHA disability accommodation and interactive process); Cal. Gov. Code §12926.1(c)