Employer pay data.

Senator Smallwood-Cuevas's pay data reporting legislation expands California's existing requirements for large employers while establishing new protections for employee privacy. The measure adds sexual orientation to the demographic categories that private employers with 100 or more employees must include in their annual reports to the Civil Rights Department, alongside existing requirements for data on race, ethnicity, and sex.

The bill requires employers to maintain demographic information separately from personnel records and specifies that sexual orientation data can only be collected through voluntary employee disclosure. For each job category and demographic combination, employers must report the number of employees, their distribution across federal pay bands, and median and mean hourly rates. The Civil Rights Department must publish these reports in a format that prevents individual employee identification.

Starting in May 2027, the reporting mandate extends to public employers with 100 or more employees, who must submit data on employee ethnicity, race, disability status, veteran status, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation organized by civil service pay scale categories. The bill establishes mandatory civil penalties of $100 per employee for initial reporting failures and $200 per employee for subsequent violations, with courts required to impose these penalties upon the department's request.