Judgment debtor employers: Employment Development Department.

Senator Pérez, joined by coauthors Senators Rubio and Strickland and Assembly Member Ortega, advances a measure that links wage-debt judgments against California employers to a defined documentary timetable, placing a new obligation on judgment-debtor employers to report compliance or satisfaction within 60 days of a final judgment. The core change adds a Labor Code provision requiring the employer to provide to the Labor Commissioner documentation that one of three conditions is met: the judgment is fully satisfied; a bond securing the judgment has been posted; or the employer has entered into and is in compliance with an installment-payment arrangement under the existing bond framework.

If the employer fails to provide qualifying documentation within the 60-day window, a civil penalty of 2,500 dollars is issued by the Labor Commissioner. If noncompliance persists, the Labor Commissioner must notify the employer that the unsatisfied judgment may be treated as potential tax fraud by the Tax Support Division of the Employment Development Department, with the civil penalty due 90 days after that notice. Should the civil penalty remain unpaid after that period, the Labor Commissioner must transmit to the EDD a notice that includes a summary of the final judgment and identifying information for the liable parties, including sensitive identifiers such as social security numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, and addresses.

Notwithstanding other laws, the measure ties enforcement to existing mechanisms for wage withholding, bonding, and installment payments, while imposing additional administrative steps on the Labor Commissioner and the EDD. Notices to judgment-debtors are sent by first-class mail to the last known address on file, and the 60-day clock runs from the final judgment rather than from service or appeal events. The proposal relies on a cross-agency workflow that would escalate unresolved judgments into tax-enforcement channels, raising considerations about data privacy and interagency data handling, and it creates no new appropriation in its standalone form.

For workers, the changes provide a clearer enforcement pathway to resolution of wage judgments; for employers, they introduce a defined timeline and potential penalties and data-sharing obligations tied to unresolved judgments. The Labor Commissioner would gain new duties to issue citations, collect documentation, and coordinate with the EDD, while the EDD would assume a role in investigating potential tax-fraud flags resulting from unpaid judgments. The measure builds on existing wage-withholding and bonding provisions and on the EDD’s tax-support framework, situating wage-claim enforcement within a broader state compliance regime and shaping how judgments proceed toward final satisfaction or escalation.