When does SB 947 take effect?

July 1, 2027. From then, an employer can't rely solely on an automated decision system to discipline or fire someone, must have a human corroborate any ADS output it primarily relies on, must give a written post-use notice, and must describe the worker's own data on request.

Does SB 947 apply only to large California employers?

No. The signed text sets no size threshold. Its definition of employer also covers state and local government employers, labor contractors and farm labor contractors. Parties to a collective bargaining agreement that explicitly waives the law and provides protection from algorithmic management are outside it.

What does SB 951 require in a layoff notice?

When AI or other automated technology is a whole or substantial cause of a Cal/WARN mass layoff, relocation or termination, the notice must start with 'This notice is for a technology displacement' and give the numbers, roles and locations affected, the job functions being automated, and the type of technology involved.

When does SB 951 take effect?

January 1, 2027. The bill has no operative date of its own, so the California Constitution's default for regular-session statutes applies. The Employment Development Department will publish summaries of the technology displacement notices it receives, plus quarterly statewide summaries.

Did Newsom veto a similar bill before?

Yes. He vetoed SB 7 on October 13, 2025, writing that it imposed unfocused notification requirements and overly broad limits on how employers use ADS tools, and pointing to forthcoming California Privacy Protection Agency regulations. SB 947 is the narrower successor.

SB 947 and SB 951 Signed: HR AI Rules 2027

Image: Unsplash.

California's two new workplace AI laws do different jobs on different clocks. SB 947 controls how an employer uses an automated decision system, or ADS, to discipline or fire one person, and it starts July 1, 2027. SB 951 changes what a Cal/WARN layoff notice must say when AI is behind the layoff, and it applies from January 1, 2027. The layoff notice comes due first, and the state will publish what you put in it.

Updated October 15, 2026. We first wrote this article in August, while both bills were still moving, and rewrote it on October 1 from summaries of the enrolled text. This version is checked line by line against the chaptered text on California Legislative Information. The correction is at the end.

What Newsom signed

Governor Gavin Newsom signed both bills on September 30, 2026, among the 13 his office listed that day. SB 947, by Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton), is Chapter 859 of 2026. SB 951, by Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes (D-Colton), is Chapter 860. SB 947 sets its own start date in Section 1526.7. SB 951 has none, so the state constitution's default applies: a regular-session statute takes effect "on January 1 next following a 90-day period from the date of enactment." For the rest of that day's batch, see our September 30 signings tracker.

The California Federation of Labor Unions sponsored SB 947. McNerney's statement on signing day was blunt: "No worker should ever be fired or disciplined by a robo boss." He added: "AI must remain a tool controlled by humans, not the other way around."

SB 947: firing or disciplining with an ADS

What counts as an ADS, and who is an employer

The law defines an automated decision system as "any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence" that issues a simplified output, such as a score, classification or recommendation, used to assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking and that materially impacts people. Spam filters, firewalls, antivirus, identity and access tools, calculators and databases are excluded.

The test isn't whether a vendor calls the tool AI. It's whether the tool produces an output that feeds a discipline or termination decision. Performance platforms that score employees, attendance systems that issue automatic warnings and productivity classifiers are the obvious candidates. Whether a particular product qualifies is a question for counsel.

There's no employer size threshold. The definition reaches anyone who employs or controls the wages, hours or working conditions of a worker, and it names state and local government employers, labor contractors and farm labor contractors.

What the signed text requires

No sole reliance. An employer "shall not rely solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary or termination decision."
Human corroboration. If the employer primarily relies on an ADS output, a human must corroborate the decision using the data behind the output or other relevant information. The law's examples are supervisory evaluations, personnel files, work product, peer reviews and witness interviews, "that may include relevant online customer reviews." If the output can't be corroborated, or the reviewer finds it inaccurate, incomplete or misleading, the employer can't use it.
A description of the worker's own data, on request. When an ADS was the primary basis for the decision, the employee can ask for "a meaningful, objective description of the employee's own data used by the ADS," with other people's personal information anonymized.
A post-use notice. It goes to the worker at the time they're told of the decision, as a separate, plain-language communication in the language the employer normally uses with staff.
Prohibited uses. No ADS may be used to violate labor, health and safety, employment or civil rights law, to infer a worker's protected status, or to predict and take adverse action against workers for exercising their legal rights.
No retaliation against anyone who uses these rights or complains to the Labor Commissioner.

Section 1524 of SB 947 as chaptered, listing the timing and the four required contents of the ADS post-use notice

Screenshot: SB 947 chaptered text, Labor Code Section 1524, California Legislative Information.

Enforcement

The Labor Commissioner can investigate, order temporary relief and issue citations, and public prosecutors can sue. The burden of proof favors the worker: once it's shown that an ADS was used, the employer must prove that it didn't primarily rely on the system or that it followed the corroboration and notice rules. Each violation carries a $500 civil penalty, and a court can also award injunctive relief, punitive damages and attorney's fees.

That burden answers a familiar objection. When the signing reached r/technology on October 1, one reply to the thread's summary was a mock HR statement: "ultimately the decision was not made by solely relying on the data provided by the AI." The commenter, Robeleader, concluded: "done. everyone can be fired now." Under the signed text, that sentence doesn't end the matter. If the ADS output was the primary basis, the employer still owes the corroboration, the notice and, on request, the data description, and it carries the burden of proving it complied. Another commenter, NMe84, asked the harder question: "So no actual protection against being replaced by AI?" Correct. SB 951 makes the employer say so in the notice; it doesn't stop the layoff.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1wuw7ix/gavin_newsom_signs_laws_to_protect_california/

Carve-outs and overlaps

Collective bargaining. The law doesn't apply where a collective bargaining agreement explicitly waives it, covers wages and working conditions, and "provides protection from algorithmic management."
Federal aerospace and defense work. Uses required by, or reasonably necessary to comply with, federal law or a binding federal contract on aircraft for the national airspace or on national security, military, space or defense products are exempt.
Other notice laws. An employer that meets SB 947's notice rules doesn't have to meet substantially similar ADS notice provisions under other California law. The exception: a business covered by the CCPA remains subject to the California Privacy Protection Agency's automated decisionmaking technology regulations. See our California ADMT employer templates.
Local ordinances that protect workers equally or more are not preempted.

SB 947 also sits alongside federal rules. See the EEOC AI hiring guidance checklist and, if you hire in New York City, the Local Law 144 employer guide.

SB 951: the technology displacement notice

SB 951 doesn't create a new notice or a new trigger. It adds fields to the existing Cal/WARN notice. The usual thresholds still decide whether you're covered: a covered establishment has employed 75 or more people in the preceding 12 months, a mass layoff is 50 or more employees in a 30-day period, and notice goes out 60 days before the order takes effect, to the affected employees, the Employment Development Department, the local workforce development board and local elected officials.

When the layoff, relocation or termination is caused "in whole or in substantial part" by an AI system or other automated technology replacing or automating jobs, the notice must open with the line "This notice is for a technology displacement" and add:

the number, classification or occupation, and work location of the affected layoffs,
the job functions that will be automated, and
the specific category or type of AI or automated technology that caused the displacement.

Labor Code Section 1401(d) as amended by SB 951, with the technology displacement fields and the EDD publication duty

Screenshot: SB 951 chaptered text, Labor Code Section 1401(d), California Legislative Information.

The Employment Development Department must publish a summary of these notices on its website and a quarterly statewide summary of technology displacements. Plan for that part: a layoff you attribute to AI becomes a line in a state report. Cal/WARN's existing penalty, up to $500 for each day of violation, is unchanged; the bill doesn't add a separate penalty for the new fields, and how a court would treat an incomplete AI disclosure is untested.

SB 951 also points at the next fight. A new Section 1402.7 requires the department to report to the Legislature by January 1, 2028 on how AI affects hiring, including "technological cessation in hiring," meaning an employer permanently stops hiring for a role because of AI. The report can recommend a public notice requirement for that, too.

Why this version got signed

Newsom vetoed SB 7, the earlier No Robo Bosses Act, on October 13, 2025. His letter said the bill "imposes unfocused notification requirements on any business using even the most innocuous tools" and objected to barring customer ratings as the primary input to an ADS. He pointed to forthcoming California Privacy Protection Agency regulations instead.

Governor Newsom's October 13, 2025 letter returning SB 7 without his signature

Screenshot: veto message for SB 7, Office of the Governor of California.

SB 947 reads like a point-by-point answer. Notice comes after a decision, not before every deployment. The scope is discipline and termination. Customer reviews are now listed as acceptable corroborating evidence. And the CCPA carve-out leaves the privacy agency's rules in place. That's our reading of why the second version passed; the governor's release doesn't explain the reversal.

The prediction clause shows how far the bill moved. A Hacker News thread from March 2025, on the first version, argued over exactly that part. One commenter, bko, asked: "Don't we want to use objective systems to 'predict' how employees will perform?" Another, fragmede, replied that the problem comes when race or gender "gets imputed in other ways, like zip code or purchasing habits." The signed law keeps only the narrowest version: no predicting and punishing workers for exercising their legal rights.

What our earlier versions got wrong

The first version, from August, described committee drafts. Several features it reported aren't in the chaptered text:

Earlier description	Chaptered text
90-day notice for AI-driven layoffs	The existing 60-day Cal/WARN notice
Trigger of 25 workers or 25 percent of the workforce	Existing Cal/WARN thresholds (above)
Right of first bid for displaced workers and a dedicated penalty fund	Not in the text
SB 947 operative January 1, 2027	Operative July 1, 2027
Annual worker data request right	A right to a description of the worker's own data, only after an ADS-primary discipline or termination decision
Ban on predictive behavior profiling	Narrower: no predicting and acting against workers for exercising their legal rights

If a feature in your compliance plan comes from an alert written before September, check it against the chaptered text.

What to do before each date

Before January: update the Cal/WARN template. Add the technology displacement header and the three fields, and decide who determines whether automation is a "substantial" cause. That is a legal and a communications call, because the notice becomes public.
Inventory your ADS tools. List every HR, workforce and performance tool that scores, flags or recommends, and mark which ones feed discipline or termination.
Document the human. Record who reviewed the output, what evidence they checked and what they decided. The statute puts the burden on you, so the record is your defense.
Build the data request process. Decide who answers a worker's request for a description of their data, how fast, and how other people's information is anonymized.
Draft the SB 947 notice. Four items: an ADS was the primary basis, a human reviewed and corroborated it, a human contact for questions and for the data request, and the no-retaliation statement.
Ask vendors what the score means. If a tool scores your employees, you need to know what data drives the output and how a human could check it. If the answer is "trust the score," you can't corroborate it.

What we didn't check

We read both chaptered texts, the SB 7 veto message, the governor's signing release and Senator McNerney's release. We didn't read the committee analyses, and neither the Labor Commissioner nor the Employment Development Department had published implementing guidance when we checked.

Correction, October 15, 2026: an earlier version said we found no worker data request right in SB 947. The signed text gives a worker the right to request a description of their own data used by the ADS after an ADS-primary discipline or termination decision, and the post-use notice must tell them how to use it. It also described California's ADMT regulations as covering consumer data uses only; SB 947 keeps CCPA-covered employers subject to them.

Sources: SB 947 chaptered text, SB 951 chaptered text, Governor's September 30, 2026 release, SB 7 veto message, Senator McNerney's signing release, California Constitution, Article IV, Section 8.