Can I take time off work in California after a miscarriage or stillbirth?

A: Yes. Since 1 January 2024 it is an unlawful employment practice in California for an employer to refuse a request to take up to five days of reproductive loss leave following a reproductive loss event.¹ You need to have worked there 30 days.² The employer needs five or more employees — or to be the state, a city or a county, at any size.³

The days do not have to be consecutive. The statute says the employer "shall allow" them to be taken nonconsecutively.⁴ You can take one day, work three, and take the rest.

Twenty days is the annual ceiling. More than one loss in a 12-month period is still five days each, up to a total of 20 days within a 12-month period.¹ Note the unit: a rolling 12 months, not a calendar year.

What counts as a loss

The statute names five events: a failed adoption, a failed surrogacy, a miscarriage, a stillbirth, or an unsuccessful assisted reproduction.⁵ Two things about that list are worth reading slowly.

It is not only the person who was pregnant. "Miscarriage" is defined as a miscarriage "by a person, by the person's current spouse or domestic partner, or by another individual if the person would have been a parent of a child born as a result of the pregnancy."⁶ The same three-way scope is written into stillbirth and unsuccessful assisted reproduction. A non-gestational partner is covered. An intended parent through surrogacy is covered.

"Unsuccessful assisted reproduction" means a failed IUI or ART cycle — and the statute says in terms that assisted reproduction "does not include any pregnancy achieved through sexual intercourse."⁷

A multi-day event is one event. The statute defines the reproductive loss event as "the day or, for a multiple-day event, the final day" of the loss.⁵ One event, one five-day entitlement, and the clock starts on that final day.

The clock, and the part that saves people

The leave has to be completed within three months of the event.⁸ But there is an exception that matters enormously here, because pregnancy disability leave usually comes first: if before or immediately after the loss you are on, or choose to go on, leave under pregnancy disability leave, the California Family Rights Act, "or any other leave entitlement under state or federal law," you complete your reproductive loss leave within three months of the end date of that other leave.⁹

So taking medical leave first does not burn the entitlement. The three months restarts when that leave ends.

Paid or unpaid

The leave is taken under any existing applicable leave policy your employer has.¹⁰ If there is no such policy, the leave "may be unpaid," except that you may use vacation, personal leave, accrued and available sick leave, or compensatory time off that is otherwise available to you.¹¹ In plain terms: the job protection is guaranteed; the pay comes from your own accrued time unless the employer's policy pays for it.

Nobody is entitled to make you prove it

Section 12945.6 contains no documentation requirement. There is no certification provision, no verification provision, nothing. That is not an accident — the bereavement leave statute enacted one year earlier expressly lets an employer request proof of a death,¹² and the Legislature did not carry that provision into this one. The Civil Rights Department says it plainly: "The law does not require an employee to submit documentation in support of their leave request."¹³

Be precise about what that means. It means you do not have to produce anything. It does not mean an employer commits a separate violation by asking. And if you do hand something over, the employer "shall maintain the confidentiality of any employee requesting leave," and any information you provide "shall be maintained as confidential and shall not be disclosed except to internal personnel or counsel, as necessary, or as required by law."¹⁴

If it goes wrong

Retaliating against you for taking the leave, or for giving information in a proceeding about someone else's leave, is unlawful, and so is interfering with the attempt to exercise the right at all.¹⁵ This is a Fair Employment and Housing Act right, so the complaint goes to the Civil Rights Department, and the deadline to file the intake form is three years from the date you were last harmed.¹⁶

One trap almost nobody covers: if your employer has between 5 and 19 employees, you cannot go straight to court. California's small employer family leave mediation program is a prerequisite — you "shall not pursue any civil action" under this section unless the mediation is not initiated in time, or is complete, or is deemed unsuccessful.¹⁷ The limitations period is tolled while you are in it.

Do this: tell your employer, in writing, that you are requesting reproductive loss leave under Government Code section 12945.6 and name the dates. Use those words — an employer's HR system may not recognise anything else. Say whether you are electing to use accrued sick leave or PTO to be paid. If you are also taking pregnancy disability leave, say so in the same message, because it is what protects the three-month window. If you want to talk to someone about the loss itself, the leave and the therapy are separate questions and neither has to wait on the other. What therapy costs in California →

Sources

1. Government Code §12945.6(b)(1): "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to refuse to grant a request by any employee to take up to five days of reproductive loss leave following a reproductive loss event… If an employee experiences more than one reproductive loss event within a 12-month period, an employer shall not be obligated to grant a total amount of reproductive loss leave time in excess of 20 days within a 12-month period." Added by Stats. 2023, Ch. 724, §1 (SB 848), operative 1 January 2024 — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
2. Government Code §12945.6(a)(2) — "'Employee' means a person employed by the employer for at least 30 days prior to the commencement of the leave."
3. Government Code §12945.6(a)(3) — a person employing five or more persons, or "the state and any political or civil subdivision of the state, including, but not limited to, cities and counties."
4. Government Code §12945.6(b)(2).
5. Government Code §12945.6(a)(7) — "'Reproductive loss event' means the day or, for a multiple-day event, the final day of a failed adoption, failed surrogacy, miscarriage, stillbirth, or an unsuccessful assisted reproduction."
6. Government Code §12945.6(a)(6).
7. Government Code §12945.6(a)(10); failed adoption is defined at (a)(4), failed surrogacy at (a)(5), stillbirth at (a)(9).
8. Government Code §12945.6(b)(3)(A).
9. Government Code §12945.6(b)(3)(B) — "if, prior to or immediately following a reproductive loss event, an employee is on or chooses to go on leave from work pursuant to Section 12945, 12945.2, or any other leave entitlement under state or federal law, the employee shall complete their reproductive loss leave within three months of the end date of the other leave."
10. Government Code §12945.6(b)(4)(A).
11. Government Code §12945.6(b)(4)(B).
12. Government Code §12945.7(f) — the bereavement leave documentation provision, which has no analogue in §12945.6 — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
13. California Civil Rights Department, Leave From Work After a Reproductive Loss fact sheet (CRD-E18P-ENG, January 2024) — calcivilrights.ca.gov.
14. Government Code §12945.6(e).
15. Government Code §12945.6(c) and (d).
16. Government Code §12960(e)(5) — three years to file a complaint alleging a violation of Article 1 of Chapter 6, which is where §12945.6 sits — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov; CRD, Complaint Process — calcivilrights.ca.gov.
17. Government Code §12945.21(a) and (c) — the small employer family leave mediation program, extended to §§12945.6 and 12945.7 by Stats. 2024, Ch. 147 (AB 2011), effective 1 January 2025 — leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.

All sections read on the operative text on 18 August 2026. This page describes the statute; it is not legal advice.