Paid family leave: eligibility: care for designated persons.

Senator Durazo, working with principal coauthors Assembly Members Mark González and Wicks and other colleagues, advances a measure to broaden California's paid family leave program by extending eligibility to include time off to care for a designated person, expanding the pool of qualifying caregiving relationships and tying the expansion to a deliberate 2028 transition. The core change would allow up to eight weeks of wage replacement for caring for a designated person, adding this category to existing covered relationships, with a staged path to full integration into the state’s claims system by July 1, 2028. The package maintains the surrounding framework of protections under the California Family Rights Act and pregnancy disability leave.

Key mechanisms hinge on redefining who may be a care recipient and how eligibility is established. The designated person would be defined as a care recipient related by blood or whose association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship, with designated person folded into the broader concepts of care recipient, care provider, family care leave, and family member. For first-time PFLO claims involving a designated person, the claimant would identify the designated person and, under penalty of perjury, attest to the nature of their relationship. The program would apply the same wage-replacement structure and eight-week cap within any 12-month period as the existing framework, and the changes are temporary, slated to sunset on July 1, 2028, at which point the provisions would be incorporated into the Employment Development Department’s integrated claims management system. The bill also authorizes an appropriation from the continuously appropriated Unemployment Insurance Fund and specifies that no local reimbursement is required for mandated costs.

Implementation would be overseen by the Employment Development Department, with definitional alignment to cross-referenced provisions governing qualifying exigencies and serious health conditions. The transition anticipates embedding the expanded framework within the agency’s modern claims system by 2028, ensuring continuity of benefits and processing. The expansion signals a shift in caregiver protections by recognizing designated persons as eligible care recipients, while preserving existing rights and leaving the broader policy context of family leave and workplace accommodations intact. Stakeholders—workers seeking expanded caregiver benefits, employers adjusting payroll and leave practices, local agencies, and state administration—would experience changes in eligibility scope, administrative responsibilities, and system integration timelines as the policy moves toward full implementation.