At a Glance: What SB 947 Requires and When
On September 30, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 947, the “No Robo Bosses Act,” into law, effective July 1, 2027. The law prohibits California employers from relying solely on AI or other automated decision systems (ADS) to discipline or terminate employees, and requires meaningful human review and written notice to affected workers when such tools play a primary role in those decisions. Employers using AI-driven workforce management tools should begin compliance planning now.
Who Is Covered
The law applies to all California employers, private and public, regardless of size. It protects employees only; independent contractors and other contingent workers are not covered.
What Counts as an “Automated Decision System” (ADS)
An Automated Decision System (ADS) is any computational process — derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or AI — that produces a simplified output (such as a score, classification, or recommendation) used to assist or replace human judgment in a way that materially impacts employees. Expressly excluded are spam filters, firewalls, antivirus software, identity and access management tools, calculators, databases, and tools that merely compile or store data.
What the Law Requires of Employers
- Human Oversight of AI-Driven Discipline and Termination
Employers may not rely solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary or termination decision. Where an employer primarily relies on ADS output, a human must genuinely corroborate that decision using the underlying data or other relevant information. The law does not define what it means to primarily rely on ADS. When this standard is triggered, corroborating data may include supervisory or managerial evaluations, personnel files, employee work product, peer reviews, witness interviews, and relevant online customer reviews, among others.
If the ADS output cannot be corroborated, or the reviewer finds it inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, the employer may not use the ADS output to support the decision. Rubber-stamping an AI-generated outcome will not satisfy the statute.
- Written Post-Use Notice to the Employee
If an employer primarily relied on an ADS to make a disciplinary or termination decision, the employer must provide the affected employee with a written post-use notice at the time the employee is informed of the decision. The notice must be a plain-language, stand-alone document delivered in a simple format (such as email or hyperlink) in the language used for the employee’s routine communications. It must state that an ADS was primarily used, confirm that a human reviewed and corroborated the output, provide a human point of contact, inform the employee of their right to access a description of their own data, and inform the employee of their anti-retaliation rights.
- Employee Data Access Right
An employee has the right to request, and an employer must provide, a meaningful, objective description of the employee’s own data used by the ADS in connection with the decision. The law defines “employee data” broadly to mean any information that identifies, relates to, or describes an employee, regardless of how the information is collected, inferred, or obtained. When providing a description, the employer must anonymize the personal information of customers, other employees, or third parties.
- No Retaliation
Employers are prohibited from discharging, threatening to discharge, demoting, suspending, or in any manner retaliating against any employee for exercising rights under the law, filing a complaint with the Labor Commissioner, alleging a violation, cooperating in an investigation or prosecution, or otherwise assisting in enforcement.
What Employers Are Prohibited From Doing
Regardless of the degree of ADS reliance, employers may never use an ADS to circumvent applicable labor, employment, health and safety, or civil rights laws; infer an employee’s protected status; or take adverse action against a worker for exercising their legal rights (or based on a prediction by an ADS that the employee may exercise their legal rights).
Enforcement and Liability Exposure
The Labor Commissioner may investigate violations, issue citations, order temporary relief, and bring civil actions; public prosecutors may do the same. Violations carry a civil penalty of $500 per violation. Plaintiffs may also seek injunctive relief, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees and costs.
The corroboration and sole-reliance requirements include a burden-shifting provision: once ADS use in a disciplinary or termination decision is established, the burden shifts to the employer to show it did not primarily rely on the ADS or that it otherwise complied with the statute’s requirements.
Exemptions Available
- Collective Bargaining Agreements: The law does not apply where a CBA explicitly waives its provisions in clear and unambiguous terms and provides for wages, working conditions, and protection from algorithmic management.
- Federal Preemption Carve-Out: The law does not apply where ADS use is required by, or reasonably necessary to comply with, a federal statute, regulation, or binding federal contract relating to aircraft development for the national airspace or to products or services for national security, military, space, or defense purposes, and only to the extent of those covered operations.
- Notice Consolidation: An employer that meets SB 947’s notice requirements need not separately comply with substantially similar notice obligations under other California laws addressing ADS use in employment decisions, except where those laws govern quotas or other automated standards applied to working conditions.
SB 947 Compliance Is a Floor, Not a Ceiling: Local and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Obligations Remain
- Local Ordinances: SB 947 does not preempt any city, county, or city and county ordinance that provides equal or greater protection to covered employees. Employers operating in jurisdictions that have enacted or may enact their own AI employment ordinances cannot treat SB 947 compliance as a ceiling. Local requirements may be more demanding and must be assessed independently.
- CCPA: SB 947 compliance does not satisfy CCPA obligations. SB 947’s prohibitions and notice requirements apply only to the use of ADS in connection with disciplinary and termination decisions, whereas CCPA covers a broader range of employment decisions. Employers subject to the CCPA remain independently subject to any automated decision-making regulations issued by the California Privacy Protection Agency and should address both regimes separately.
Recommended Next Steps
The July 1, 2027 operative date is fixed. Employers should begin the following steps immediately:
- Audit existing ADS tools. Identify every tool that uses machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or AI and assess whether it produces output used, even in part, in disciplinary or termination decisions.
- Build genuine human review protocols. Design workflows that require a human reviewer to examine the underlying data and corroborating information before any adverse employment action is taken. If the output cannot be corroborated, or is found to be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, it may not be used. Document the reviewer’s analysis and conclusions.
- Prepare post-use notice templates. Draft notices that satisfy the statutory requirements: plain language, stand-alone format, in all languages used for routine employee communications, delivered via a simple method such as email or hyperlink. Integrate these templates into existing HR and termination workflows.
- Review collective bargaining agreements. Assess whether existing CBAs contain, or could be negotiated to include an explicit, unambiguous waiver of the law’s requirements together with provisions addressing wages, working conditions, and protection from algorithmic management.
- Identify and comply with overlapping obligations. Employers with multi-jurisdiction California operations should assess whether local ordinances impose requirements beyond SB 947 and adhere to the more protective standard. CCPA-covered businesses should also engage privacy counsel to separately monitor the California Privacy Protection Agency’s automated decision-making rulemaking.
- Revisit worker classification. Contractors are currently excluded, as the law’s protections extend only to employees.
- Document decision-making processes. Given the burden-shifting provision applicable to the sole-reliance and corroboration requirements, employers should maintain clear records showing where human judgment, not AI output, was the operative basis for disciplinary or termination decisions.
Looking Ahead
The “primarily relies” standard will be the central battleground in early enforcement and litigation. No regulatory guidance yet defines when an employer crosses that threshold. Employers should monitor the Labor Commissioner’s enforcement priorities and be prepared to adjust their protocols as interpretive clarity develops.
Crowell & Moring will continue to monitor these legal developments. For further information, please contact our team.
For further information, please contact:
Kris D. Meade, Partner, Crowell & Moring
kmeade@crowell.com
