California SB 947, signed on September 30, 2026, would bar employers from relying solely on an automated decision system to discipline or terminate workers once it becomes operative on July 1, 2027

What does SB 947 actually prohibit in discipline and termination?

Once Part 5.5.5 becomes operative on July 1, 2027, and not before, it would stop an employer from making an ADS the only basis for a disciplinary or termination decision. Proposed Section 1522(b)(1) reads: "An employer shall not rely solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary or termination decision."

That is the whole of the outright bar. The bill does not prohibit using an ADS in discipline. It regulates the employer that relies on one primarily. Under Section 1522(b)(2), from the operative date, an employer that primarily relies on ADS output for such a decision would have to have a human corroborate it using the data collected or used to produce the output, or other relevant corroborating or supporting information. The text lists examples: supervisory or managerial evaluations, personnel files, work product, peer reviews, and witness interviews, "that may include relevant online customer reviews."

Section 1522(c) closes the loop. If the employer cannot corroborate the ADS output, or the human reviewer concludes the output is "inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading," the employer would be barred, once the part is operative, from using that output to make the decision.

Separately, Section 1522(a) lists three uses of an ADS that would be off limits from July 1, 2027: preventing compliance with or violating labor, health and safety, employment or civil rights law; inferring an employee's protected status under Government Code Section 12940; and predicting and taking adverse action against a worker for exercising legal rights. Those three are not confined by their wording to discipline. We report them as written and do not read them more broadly.

What counts as an automated decision system under the bill?

For the part that becomes operative on July 1, 2027, the definition in proposed Section 1520(c) is broad on the technology and narrower on effect. It covers any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence that issues simplified output, such as a score, classification or recommendation, that is "used to assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking and materially impacts natural persons."

In the enrolled text, which becomes operative on July 1, 2027, the definition then carves out a spam email filter, firewall, antivirus software, identity and access management tools, calculator, database, dataset, or other compilation of data. "ADS output" in Section 1520(a) means any information, data, assumptions, predictions, scoring, recommendations, decisions or conclusions an ADS generates.

"Employer" is defined widely in the enrolled text, for a part that becomes operative on July 1, 2027. It reaches anyone who directly or indirectly, or through an agent, employs or exercises control over wages, hours or working conditions, and it expressly includes branches of state government, cities, counties, school and community college districts, the California State University, the University of California "upon agreement by the regents," labor contractors, and farm labor and foreign labor contractors.

What would employers owe employees after an ADS-driven decision?

Two employee-facing duties attach once an employer has primarily relied on an ADS, and both start only on July 1, 2027.

Once the part becomes operative on July 1, 2027, one is a written postuse notice under proposed Section 1524. It would be given at the time the employer informs the employee of the decision, in plain language as a separate, stand-alone communication, in the language of routine workplace communications, and by a simple method such as email or a hyperlink. It would state that the employer primarily relied on an ADS, that a human reviewed the decision and corroborated the ADS output, who the employee can contact for more information and about data access, and that retaliation for exercising rights under the part is prohibited.

Once the part becomes operative on July 1, 2027, the other is a data-description right under Section 1522(d). The employee could request, and the employer would have to provide, "a meaningful, objective description of the employee's own data used by the ADS". Section 1522(e) adds that any such description would anonymize the personal information of customers, other employees and other individuals.

From July 1, 2027, Section 1526 would also bar discharge, threats, demotion, suspension or other retaliation against an employee for using these rights, complaining to the Labor Commissioner, or assisting enforcement.

How would SB 947 be enforced, and who is carved out?

From the operative date of July 1, 2027, the Labor Commissioner could investigate, order temporary relief, issue citations and file civil actions under Section 1526.1(a), and a public prosecutor could also enforce the part. Section 1526.1(e) sets a civil penalty of $500 per violation. Section 1526.1(d) lets a petitioner in a superior court civil action seek temporary or preliminary injunctive relief, punitive damages, and reasonable attorney's fees and costs.

Section 1526.1(c) shifts the burden of proof, once the part is operative on July 1, 2027. In a proceeding over subdivision (b) or (c) of Section 1522, once it is shown that an ADS was used, the employer would carry the burden of showing that it did not primarily rely on an ADS or that it complied with Sections 1522 and 1524. That subdivision refers to "a disciplinary or deactivation decision" where the rest of the part says termination. The text does not explain the difference, and we do not resolve it.

The exceptions are specific, and like the rest of the part they take effect only on July 1, 2027. Section 1526.5 removes parties covered by a collective bargaining agreement only if the agreement "explicitly waives this part in clear and unambiguous terms," expressly provides for wages, working conditions and other terms, and provides protection from algorithmic management. Section 1526.6 excludes ADS use "required by, or reasonably necessary to comply with," a federal statute, federal regulation or binding federal contract relating to the development of aircraft for use in the national airspace, or to the development of products or services for national security, military, space or defense purposes, and only for the operations those instruments cover.

Two further provisions in the enrolled text set the bill against other law, again only from July 1, 2027. Section 1526.2 says the part does not preempt local ordinances giving equal or greater protection. Section 1526.3 says an employer that complies with the part's notice requirements need not comply with substantially similar ADS notice provisions in other state law, but that displacement does not apply to quotas as defined in Section 2100 "or any other automated standards applied to working conditions of employees", and Section 1526.4 keeps businesses subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act within any automated decisionmaking technology regulation adopted by the California Privacy Protection Agency.

Does SB 947 reach hiring or promotion?

Partly. The sole-reliance and primary-reliance rules in Section 1522(b) to (e) and the postuse notice in Section 1524 address only "a disciplinary or termination decision." We found no use of the words hiring, applicant or promotion anywhere in the enrolled text. That does not mean other employment uses fall outside the bill: the text does not establish that hiring, promotion or other uses sit outside the three Section 1522(a) prohibitions, which are not tied to discipline by their wording. All of it becomes operative on July 1, 2027. The Governor's release describes the measure in terms of disciplinary and termination decisions; the release is not the statute, and we rely on the enrolled text.

Section 1522(a) is the one part not tied to discipline by its terms. Employers using an ADS elsewhere in the employment relationship would want counsel to read those three prohibitions against their own uses before July 1, 2027. We make no claim about how a court or the Labor Commissioner would apply them.

What we did not verify

What we opened: the California Legislative Information page for SB 947 as saved on October 1, 2026, which displays the enrolled version dated September 4, 2026, including the Legislative Counsel's Digest and the full bill text, Sections 1 to 3; and the Office of the Governor release dated September 30, 2026, which lists SB 947 among the legislation the Governor signed that day.

What we did not open: any chaptered version of the bill or a Secretary of State chapter number, the bill's status and history pages, committee analyses, any signing message specific to SB 947, the Labor Code sections the bill cross-references (98.3, 98.7, 98.74, 1197.1, 2100), Government Code Sections 12940 and 52008, and any California Privacy Protection Agency regulation referred to in Section 1526.4.

What we refuse to claim: we do not call the copy we read chaptered, and we do not give a chapter number. We do not say the bill bans AI or ADS use in discipline, because only sole reliance is barred. We do not say any duty applies before July 1, 2027. We do not extend the discipline and termination rules to hiring, promotion or other decisions. We make no claim about how the bill compares with laws elsewhere; the Governor's release makes such claims and we have not tested them.

Quotations from the bill are copied from the enrolled text, with curly quotation marks and apostrophes folded to straight ASCII characters.

Informational analysis for working professionals, not legal advice. Confirm how any rule applies to your situation with qualified counsel.

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