California SB 951, signed on September 30, 2026, would add AI and automation details to Cal/WARN notices of mass layoffs, relocations and terminations caused in whole or in substantial part by AI or other automated technology

What would SB 951 add to a Cal/WARN notice?

Once the amendments to Labor Code Section 1401 take effect, an employer that is already giving a Cal/WARN notice would add technology details where the event meets the bill's AI test. Proposed Section 1401(d)(1) covers an employer giving notice of a mass layoff, relocation, or termination "caused in whole or in substantial part by an AI system or other automated technology replacing or automating employment positions".

Under that subdivision, from the date it operates, the notice would also state the number, classification or occupation, and work location of the layoffs substantially due to replacement or automation by AI or other automated technology. It would describe "The job functions performed by those replaced workers that will be automated by AI or other automated technology" and name the specific category or type of AI system or other automating technology that substantially resulted in the displacement. Item (D) would put the statement "This notice is for a technology displacement" at the top of the notice.

The saved enrolled text does not mark which words are new. For what changes, we rely on the Legislative Counsel's Digest, which describes the bill as revising the Cal/WARN Act to add this AI content, to have the Employment Development Department publish summaries of the notices, and to call for a report on AI and hiring. None of it has a stated operative date in the text we read.

Which layoffs would fall inside the new disclosure?

Once the amendments operate, the disclosure would cover only events that already trigger a Cal/WARN notice. Section 1400.5, as the enrolled text sets it out, defines a covered establishment as a facility that employs, or has employed within the preceding 12 months, 75 or more persons; a mass layoff as a layoff during any 30-day period of 50 or more employees at a covered establishment; a relocation as the removal of all or substantially all operations to a location 100 miles or more away; and a termination as the cessation or substantial cessation of operations. Section 1401(a) keeps notice 60 days before the order takes effect. The AI items would ride on those notices and no others.

Once operative, the trigger would carry two limits of its own: causation "in whole or in substantial part", and technology that is replacing or automating employment positions. Item (A) would then count only layoffs "substantially due to the replacement or automation by AI or other automated technology". On our reading, a covered event with several causes could therefore carry an AI count smaller than the total headcount in the notice, once the provision operates. The bill does not define "substantial part", and we do not supply a test.

The enrolled text also keeps the chapter's exclusions: completion of a particular project or undertaking for employers under Wage Orders 11, 12 and 16 where employees were hired for that project, seasonal employment hired on that understanding, and, under Section 1401(g), a mass layoff, relocation or termination necessitated by a physical calamity or act of war. A reduction outside the definitions triggers no Cal/WARN notice, and on the text it would carry no AI disclosure either once the amendments take effect.

How does the bill define AI, and what would EDD publish?

Section 1400.5(a) in the enrolled text would define "Artificial intelligence" or "AI" as "an engineered or machine-based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that can influence physical or virtual environments". The phrase "other automated technology", which sits beside AI in the trigger, has no definition in the text we read, so its reach once the amendments operate is not fixed by the bill.

Once Section 1401(d)(2) operates, the Employment Development Department would publish a summary of the notices received under the subdivision on its website, "As part of its regular data reporting of the Cal-WARN Act", and would post a quarterly statewide summary of technology displacements reported. The text sets no format for either summary and does not say whether employer names would appear.

On our reading, the practical effect for an employer is that the AI items would not stay between the employer, its workers and the officials who receive the notice. A state summary drawn from them would be public, once the provision takes effect.

What does SB 951 do about AI and hiring?

Proposed Section 1402.7 would define "technological cessation in hiring" as "the permanent ending of hiring or contracting for a particular occupation or position caused in whole or in part by the employer's use of artificial intelligence or other automated technology", whether or not any workers in that role remain and whether or not overall positions fall. The causation standard there would be "in whole or in part", looser than the "in whole or in substantial part" trigger for notices.

The section would place no notice duty on employers. Under the enrolled text, once in effect, EDD would submit a report to the Legislature on or before January 1, 2028 on AI's effects on business hiring practices. The report would include one or more of four things: recommendations on a public notice requirement for employers engaged in technological cessation in hiring, covering timing, EDD's role, notice content and accuracy; a summary of hiring-demand trends by exposure to AI; a summary of how businesses use AI and its effects on hiring; and a summary of existing research.

Section 1402.7(e) would repeal the section on January 1, 2029. The enrolled text contains no employer notice duty for a stop in hiring.

What does the bill leave open?

On timing, the enrolled text states no operative date for the Section 1401 changes, and we have not verified one. On penalties, the Legislative Counsel's Digest says existing law subjects an employer that fails to give specified notice to a civil penalty of not more than $500 for each day of the violation, but the bill, which amends only Sections 1400.5 and 1401 and adds Section 1402.7, does not mention that penalty, and we did not open the penalty provision, so we do not say whether an incomplete AI disclosure would draw that penalty once the amendments operate. Two terms in the trigger are undefined: "substantial part" and "other automated technology".

The Governor's release summarises one of the signed workplace measures as "Providing more transparency by requiring employers to provide if a mass layoff, relocation, or termination is caused by an AI system". That bullet names no bill number, and its wording is broader than the enrolled text, which ties the duty, once operative, to causation in whole or in substantial part and to positions being replaced or automated. We rely on the enrolled text.

Connecticut's WARN-related AI disclosure, which this desk has covered separately, is a different state's law. SB 951 does not refer to it, and the bill amends no federal law; Section 1401(b) refers to the elements of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act only as content for a Cal/WARN notice. We have not compared the California and Connecticut texts here.

What we did not verify

What we opened: the California Legislative Information page for SB 951 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 951 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, history and vote pages, committee analyses, the prior text of Sections 1400.5 and 1401 (so we cannot mark which words are new), the Cal/WARN penalty provisions, Labor Code Section 18, the federal WARN Act, Government Code Section 9795, any EDD guidance or notice form, and the Connecticut statute. The release links signing messages for some bills; it shows none for SB 951, and we found no SB 951 signing message.

What we refuse to claim: we do not call the copy we read chaptered, and we do not give a chapter number or an operative date, including any default-date inference. We do not say every AI-related job loss triggers a notice, that the bill creates severance or other new employee rights, that it changes the federal WARN Act, or that it creates a notice duty for stopping hiring. We make no claim about how the bill compares with laws elsewhere; the Governor's release makes comparative claims about other states, and we have not tested them.

Quotations from the bill and the release are copied from the saved texts, 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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