Second question, my employer is asking me for a doctors note any time I'm absent from work. Is this legal? I needed to take a day off and let them know weeks in advance so I can take my mother to a doctors appointment and they wanted a note from her doctor as proof of the appointment. Is this legal?
California is the only state I am aware of that has a law mandating that employers provide paid sick leave (there may be others, but it is certainly not common). The California law is fairly modest in that it only requires employer to provide up to three days of paid sick leave a year. The California DIR takes the position that requiring a doctors note to take those sick leave days that you are entitled to take under the law would be illegal interference with the employee’s right to use those sick days (that does not allow an employee to abuse the leave and use it for some purpose other than what the law allows, however). The law does not expressly say that, though, and so far it has not been tested in court.
Once you are beyond the days that the state law requires the employer to provide, anything extra is simply up to the employer to decide what to provide and what conditions to set on using it. In that situation, the employer may ask for the doctor’s notes to verify the leave is being used for the purpose the employee said it was to be used.
When it comes to unpaid leave, different laws apply. I won't get into that since it seems like you are mainly asking about paid leave.
