Do Employees Have to Bring a Doctor's Note When Out Sick? [VIDEO]

This article is part of a Q&A series on important employment law topics with attorney Kevin Wicka from The Tarantino Law Firm in Buffalo, New York. You can watch or read our entire conversation here.

Do I have to bring a doctor's note if I was out sick for a day or a half day from work?

Kevin Wicka:
There's no requirement that you have to do that. Again, that comes down to if the employer is going to put a policy that says every time that you're out, you need to bring in a doctor's note. I think that that's a dangerous position to put the employer in, but if the employer has that, what they want to make sure that they have is that they're not asking for specifics about the person's medical condition. The bottom line is, can the employee do the job. They can require a medical note that says, "I had a doctor's appointment on this particular day," but there's a lot of difficulty in navigating that, so I think you have to be really careful from that, from the employer standpoint.