"I'm a firefighter, police officer, or deputy."

Section 4850 — full salary, not two-thirds

Labor Code § 4850 provides eligible public safety members with leave of absence at full salary, in lieu of temporary disability, for up to one year.

Full salary, not two-thirds, and not capped at the 2026 maximum of $1,764.11 a week.

(On tax: ordinary workers' compensation benefits are excluded from gross income under IRC § 104(a)(1), and § 4850 salary continuation is generally treated the same way because it is paid in lieu of temporary disability under the workers' compensation law. But § 4850 itself says nothing about taxation, agencies differ in how they report it, and this is a tax question rather than a Labor Code one — confirm it with a tax professional.)

It covers firefighters, police officers, sheriff's deputies, certain probation and correctional officers, lifeguards, and several other classifications — the list in the statute is specific and it is worth reading against your actual job title and employer.

One year of § 4850 time, then temporary disability if you are still off. The § 4850 year does not count against the 104-week temporary disability cap in the way people assume, and how those interact is worth getting right.

The presumptions

Labor Code §§ 3212 through 3213.2 create presumptions that certain conditions arose out of employment. A presumption reverses the burden: instead of you proving the job caused it, the employer must prove it did not — and for most of these, the statute says the presumption may not be attributed to any disease existing before employment.

Depending on classification and years of service, the presumptions can cover heart trouble, hernia, pneumonia, cancer, tuberculosis, meningitis, bloodborne infectious disease, methicillin-resistant staph, biochemical exposure, Lyme disease, and — for many classifications — post-traumatic stress.

Several extend past retirement, on a sliding scale tied to years of service. A cancer diagnosis three years after you retired may still be a claim. This is the single most commonly missed opportunity in public safety workers' compensation, and it is missed because retired members do not think of themselves as claimants.

How the presumptions work, condition by condition.

Psychiatric injury is treated differently for you

The ordinary § 3208.3 route requires that actual events of employment be the predominant cause and imposes a six-month employment threshold. The PTSD presumption available to many public safety classifications changes that analysis substantially.

It also has its own effective dates and sunset provisions, which have been extended more than once — check the current text rather than an article, because this is an area where published material goes stale quickly.

And there is Wilson v. Cal Fire (2019, en banc) on apportionment of psychiatric injury, which matters a great deal to how these cases are valued.

Retirement interacts with all of it

Industrial disability retirement through CalPERS or a county system runs alongside the comp case, and Government Code §§ 21150 and 21153 govern the interaction. A finding in one proceeding can bind the other. Do not settle a comp case without understanding what it does to a pending IDR application, and do not let an IDR determination be made without knowing what it does to the comp case.

Vigil v. County of Kern (2024, en banc) and Reed v. County of San Bernardino (2024) are both worth knowing about if your case involves multiple body parts or a disputed apportionment.