COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Extended Through Dec. 31, 2022

< Previous	Table of Contents	Next >

---

On Sept. 29, 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 152 extending the obligation of employers with 26 or more employees to provide COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave (SPSL) through Dec. 31, 2022. The text of AB 152 is found here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB152

An important feature is that the bill doesn’t require employers to provide any additional leave. When originally enacted, SPSL required covered employers to provide paid COVID-related leave through Sept. 30, 2022. The extension of SPSL does not require employers to provide new or additional leave. But the maximum 80 hours of SPSL that employees could have used between Jan. 1, 2022 and Sept. 30, 2022 (the original expiration date) must continue to be available through Dec. 31, 2022, and possibly slightly beyond 2022 if an employee begins a covered absence at the end of 2022 that continues, uninterrupted, into 2023.

Accordingly, if employees have used all their available SPSL hours before Oct. 1, 2022, and they experience another qualifying absence sometime between October and the end of the year, they are not eligible for additional SPSL and must use another form of paid leave such as vacation, California's Healthy Workplace Healthy Family Act sick leave, etc., to receive payment for the absence. Employees, however, might be eligible for unpaid job protection leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), should their illness qualify as a “serious health condition.”

If employees have not used any of their 2022 SPSL, or only a portion, they have access to this paid leave for the remainder of 2022. The extension also has ramifications for employers with 100 or more employees worldwide who must comply with San Francisco’s permanent public health emergency leave ordinance that takes effect on Oct. 1, 2022. Under the public health emergency leave ordinance, employers may count any SPSL an employee uses between Oct. 1, 2022 and Dec. 31, 2022 against the employer’s obligation to provide up to 40 hours of public health emergency leave during that period. COVID-19 is still considered a public health emergency.

In addition, employers must remember that other local SPSL ordinances remain in effect in Long Beach, the City of Los Angeles, unincorporated Los Angeles County, and Oakland. So they must comply with those local laws.

If an employee uses SPSL because she or he tests positive for COVID-19, the employer can require the worker to take a diagnostic test on or after the fifth day after the initial test and provide documentation of those results. As amended, the law also states that “if the diagnostic test is positive, the employer may also require the employee to submit to a second diagnostic test within no less than 24 hours.” The employer is required to pay for the tests.

The extended law continues to allow employers to deny SPSL if the employee refuses to take a diagnostic test.

In addition to extending SPSL through Dec. 31, 2022, the bill creates the California Small Business and Nonprofit COVID-19 Relief Grant Program as part of the SPSL.

AB 152 establishes the California Small Business and Nonprofit COVID-19 Relief Grant Program within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) to assist qualified small businesses or nonprofits that are incurring costs for COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave. The bill requires GO-Biz to provide grants to qualified small businesses or nonprofits, as defined in the act. Those provisions are repealed on Jan. 1, 2024. The grants are for reimbursement of COVID-19 SPSL paid to employees between Jan. 1, 2022 through Dec. 31, 2022. Applicants must provide proof of payment by submitting payroll records. The maximum grant per applicant is $50,000. Grants received will not count as gross income for state tax purposes. A link to California’s GO-Biz site is here: https://business.ca.gov/about/about-go-biz/

---

< California Passes a New Version of Supplemental Paid Sick Leave	Table of Contents	San Francisco Adopts Public Health Emergency Leave Ordinance >