A business led coalition is raising concerns with legislation proposed in California that would largely incorporate the terms of Governor Newsom’s executive order that created a COVID-19 presumption. The letter from the group attached addresses the provisions in SB 1159, which includes three Sections.

  • SECTION 1 codifies the policy contained in Executive Order N-62-20, which was issued by Governor Newsom on May 6, 2020. This Executive Order and this section of the bill are only effective from March 19, 2020 through July 5, 2020.
  • SECTION 2 establishes a rebuttable presumption for COVID-19 for some classifications of police, fire, and health care workers. The presumption maintains many of the provisions that were included in the executive order, including a 30-day decision-making window, a requirement to test positive, and more. Section 2 is effective July 6, 2020 and sunsets on 7/1/2024.
  • SECTION 3 establishes a rebuttable presumption for COVID-19 for all employees and places of employment that are not covered by Section 2 of the bill. The presumption would not always be applicable. Instead, the law would trigger a presumption when there was a cluster of positive tests at any “specific place of employment”. The size of the cluster needed to trigger the presumption is different based on the size of the specific place of employment. For employers with fewer than five employees no presumption is applicable. For employers with 6-100 employees a presumption is triggered when five employees test positive for COVID-19 at the specific place of employment within any 14-day period. For employers with over 100 employees the presumption turns on when 5% of the employees test positive for COVID-19 at the specific place of employment within any 14-day period. Section 3 is effective July 6, 2020 and sunsets on 7/1/2024.

Legislative leaders and representatives of employers, the insurance industry, and organized labor are reviewing SB 1159 to address concerns with respect to clarification of definitions, cost, and administrative burden.

We expect that legislation in California will be finalized very soon and the result may have an impact in other states considering COVID-19 related presumption legislation.

We encourage UWC members with operations in California to become actively engaged in consideration of this legislation.