Employment: automated decision systems.

Senator McNerney, joined by coauthors Assembly Members Bryan and Elhawary, advances a measure that would require employers to disclose and govern the use of automated decision systems in the workplace through a comprehensive notation, data-access, and accountability framework for employment-related decisions. The proposal adds a new, standalone framework within the Labor Code that defines what counts as an automated decision system, who must be covered, and how information about ADS use must be shared with workers and applicants.

At the core, the measure imposes pre-use notices, ongoing disclosures, and post-use communications around ADS deployed for hiring or other employment decisions. Employers must provide written notices to workers foreseeably affected by an ADS at least 30 days before deployment, maintain an up-to-date inventory of all ADS in use, and ensure notices are plain language and accessible in the worker’s usual language. Job applicants must be notified when ADS will influence hiring decisions for a position. Notices must describe the types of decisions potentially affected, the data inputs and their sources, key parameters that influence outputs, who built the ADS, any quotas involved, and workers’ rights to access and correct their data.

The measure also establishes specific restrictions and governance requirements. An ADS may not be used to violate labor, health and safety, or civil rights laws, infer protected statuses, or target workers for exercising legal rights. Collecting worker data for purposes not disclosed in the required notices is prohibited, and ADS cannot be the sole basis for discipline, termination, or deactivation; if it is the primary basis, a human reviewer must evaluate the ADS output alongside other relevant information. Customer ratings may not be the sole input to an ADS used in employment decisions. Workers have a right to request a copy of the most recent 12 months of their own data used by the ADS, with data provided in a privacy-preserving manner. Post-use notices are required when ADS heavily informs a disciplinary decision, including contact information for further questions and the right to access data. The measure provides enforcement tools through the Labor Commissioner, including citations and civil actions, with a civil penalty set at five hundred dollars per violation, and allows for private remedies such as injunctions and attorney’s fees. Exemptions include collective bargaining agreements that explicitly waive the provisions and protect the wages and working conditions from algorithmic management, CPRA privacy rules for covered entities, and federal-contract compliance. The act is severable and does not preempt other local protections that are equal or greater in scope.

Implementation provisions outline phased compliance: initial notice timelines for first deployment (30 days before), for existing ADS by a date certain (April 1, 2026), and ongoing notices to new hires within 30 days. Employers must keep an ADS list, provide specific notice content, and facilitate data access while anonymizing non-worker information. The measure interacts with broader state systems, including the existing duty of the Department of Technology to inventory high-risk ADS in state use, without repealing that inventory mandate, and it ties into CPRA/CPPA privacy rules for data handling and evolving privacy regulation. Finally, it preserves flexibility for enforcement in conjunction with existing labor-law procedures and allows for local and federal-contract considerations, situating the proposal within a broader framework of civil rights, workplace transparency, and privacy protections.