If your employer has interfered with your rights to medical leave or is denying you leave, contact Our Denver Colorado Paid Sick or Medical Leave Attorneys for a FREE consultation about your case.
Under Colorado’s Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (“HFWA”) (S.B. 20-205) and the Wage Protection Rules (7 CCR 1103-7), all Colorado employers must provide all employees (including full-time employees, part-time employees, and temporary employees, etc.) with Accrued Leave and Public Health Emergency Leave. This means that your employer must provide up to 48 hours of paid leave per year, and an additional 80 hours paid leave for PHE covered needs when a PHE is declared and up to four weeks after all federal and state PHEs end.
Under the HFWA, employees have the right to take leave with full pay and return to work without negative consequences. Pay must be given for all time on leave, without extra delay, and at the same pay rate as time worked and employees have the right to return to work without retaliation or other acts interfering with taking leave and return. If you believe your employer has improperly denied you leave, contact our Denver Colorado Paid Sick or Medical Leave lawyers.
Documentation cannot be required to take leave but can be required as soon as the employee can provide it after returning to work. Employers can only require reasonable documentation for Accrued Leave when the employee is absent for four or more consecutive days during which the employee would’ve ordinarily worked (not just calendar days). Employers are also prohibited from requiring that documentation have a signature, be notarized or in any particular format. Documentation may be provided by the employee for the purposes of Accrued Leave through any reasonable format, including electronically. For more information, or if you believe your employer has violated the HFWA, call our Denver Colorado Paid Sick or Medical Leave compliance attorneys.
Accrued Leave can be used for various health and safety related needs, such as a mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition that prevents work; obtaining medical care (such as a vaccination), or a medical diagnosis, care, or treatment of any mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition; care related to being a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault, or criminal harassment (including counseling); care for a family member who has a mental or physical illness, injury, or health condition, or who needs the sort of care listed above; or, due to a public health emergency, a public official closed the employee’s place of business or an employee’s school or place of care, requiring the employee to care for the child.
The accrued paid leave accumulates at a rate of one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked. Up to 48 unused leave hours can roll over to the next year, although employers are not expressly required to allow an employee to use more than 48 hours in any one benefit year. However, an employer may have a policy that is more generous than the minimum requirements by law. Questions about violations of medical leave laws can be difficult to navigate, and it is encouraged to reach out to our Denver Colorado paid leave attorneys for more guidance or to review your HFWA case.
Also, under the HFWA, it is unlawful for your employer to:
If your employer has retaliated against you or taken adverse action because of your HFWA related actions, our Denver Colorado Paid Sick or Medical Leave retaliation attorneys are prepared to fight to defend your rights.
When a Public Health Emergency is declared, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, all employers are required to provide employees with up to 80 hours of PHE leave when requested. For the purposes of PHE leave, employers may not require documentation. The recent Public Health Emergency has opened up the possibility of many valid PHE leave claims. If you believe your employer may have violated your rights to take PHE leave, contact our Denver Colorado COVID leave attorneys today to schedule a FREE consultation.
If you think that you or a loved one has had their COVID-leave (PHE) rights violated, contact our Denver Colorado COVID leave lawyers immediately.
If an employer has a policy for Paid Time Off (PTO) that provides full pay for both HFWA and non-HFWA purposes (e.g., for both sick time and vacation), and makes meets other requirements, the HFWA does not require an employer to provide additional leave.
That is, the HFWA does not require an employer to provide additional leave if it makes clear to employees, in a writing distributed in advance of an actual or anticipated leave request, that:
(A) its leave policy already provides PTO —
(1) in at least a number of hours and with pay sufficient to satisfy the minimum requirements of HFWA and the applicable rules (including but not limited to the supplemental leave required during a qualifying public health emergency),
(2) for all the same purposes covered by HFWA and applicable rules, not a narrower set of purposes, and
(3) under all the same conditions as in HFWA and applicable rules, not stricter or more onerous conditions (e.g., accrual, use, payment, annual carryover of unused accrued leave, notice and documentation requirements, and anti-retaliation and anti-interference rights); and
(B) additional HFWA leave need not be provided if employees use all their PTO for non-HFWA reasons (e.g., vacation), except if a PHE is declared after an employee uses all of their PTO for non-HFWA reasons for a benefit year, then an employer must still provide supplemental leave.
If you suspect that your employer’s PTO policy does not meet these requirements, or that your employer’s PTO policy violates your rights to take medical leave for some other reason, contact our Denver Colorado medical leave attorneys.
If you believe your right to take leave has been violated, or you have been harassed or faced adverse actions because of your HFWA leave, our skilled Denver Colorado medical leave lawyers are here to help assess your claim and work with you to enforce your rights.