Can an employer make a sick employee find their own replacement?

This is the most commonly broken sick-leave rule in California, and almost nobody breaking it believes they are doing anything unusual. A person calls in, the manager says "see if someone can cover", and a rule that reads as ordinary scheduling courtesy has already been broken.

The section is unambiguous. An employer may not require, as a condition of an employee using paid sick days, that the employee search for or find a replacement worker to cover the days they are absent.

What makes it expensive is that the violation is complete at the moment of asking. It does not depend on the employee failing to find cover, and it is not cured by paying them anyway. The request itself is the unlawful condition, which means it can be proved from a single text message sent by a supervisor who thought they were being reasonable.

The same section also protects the employee from retaliation for using sick leave, which is why the two problems usually arrive together: the shift went uncovered, somebody was annoyed, and the annoyance showed up in the next schedule. That sequence is a second claim on top of the first.