
On September 29, 2022, Governor 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 December 31, 2022. The text of AB 152 can be found here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB152.
Importantly, 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 When originally enacted, SPSL required covered employers to provide paid COVID-related leave through September 30, 2022. The extension of SPSL does not require employers to provide new or additional leave. Instead, the up to 80 hours of SPSL that employees could have used between January 1, 2022 and September 30, 2022 (the original expiration date) must continue to be available through December 31, 2022, and possibly slightly beyond 2022 if an employee begins a covered absence at the end of 2022 that continues, uninterrupted, into 2023.