California court holidays in 2028

The 2028 dates that trip people up

These 4 are court closures that a federal or out-of-state calendar will show as ordinary working days: Lincoln's Birthday (observed), FRI Feb 11, 2028, Farmworkers Day, FRI Mar 31, 2028, Native American Day, FRI Sep 22, 2028 and Day after Thanksgiving, FRI Nov 24, 2028. A response counted off a date near any of them lands a day late if the roll is missed.

The reverse error costs just as much. Columbus Day is a federal holiday and California courts are open. Lunar New Year, Diwali, Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24) and Admission Day (September 9) are California state holidays but not judicial holidays. The courts are open and the clock keeps running (CCP § 135, Gov. Code § 6700). Treating any of those as a closure produces a deadline that is early, which is survivable, but treating a closure as a working day produces one that is late.

Individual superior courts may also close by emergency order under Government Code § 68115. See Rowan v. Kirkpatrick (2020) 54 Cal.App.5th 289. Those closures cannot be predicted and are not in this list. The official Judicial Council calendar is the controlling source and should be re-checked each year.

What is different about 2028

2028 is the light year: 13 weekday closures, the fewest of the five, and the only leap year. The missing closure is New Year’s Day. January 1, 2028 falls on a Saturday, so its observance lands in the prior year, on Friday, December 31, 2027, and 2028 itself opens with no closure at all until Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on January 17.

All three of the year’s weekend holidays fall on Saturdays, and each is observed the preceding Friday: Lincoln’s Birthday on February 11, Veterans Day on November 10, and New Year’s on the December 31 above. Farmworkers Day needs no shift; it falls on Friday, March 31 on its own. The year still has 247 court days. What changes is where the Fridays are.

Other years

California court holidays 2026California court holidays 2027California court holidays 2029California court holidays 2030

A court-day count started late in 2028 routinely runs into 2029, so a single-year sheet is not always enough. Every closure from 2026 through 2030 is on the full California court holiday calendar, generated from this same function.

To apply these dates rather than read them, the discovery response deadline calculator and the trial countdown calculator both roll against this list automatically and print the weekday next to every date so you can see the roll happened.