California SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act of 2026, would stop employers from firing or disciplining workers based solely on an algorithm’s output. The state Senate passed it 29-9 on 19 May 2026. It cleared an Assembly Appropriations Committee vote of ten to four on 13 August 2026 and was ordered to Assembly third reading on 21 August 2026 — meaning it is one floor vote away from heading back to the Senate for concurrence, then to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. It is not law yet.

The dek

SB 947 would bar California employers from relying solely on an automated decision system, or ADS, to fire, discipline, or “deactivate” a worker. Violations carry a civil penalty of five hundred dollars per violation. The bill’s own text, as amended on 21 August 2026, assigns enforcement to the Labor Commissioner and to public prosecutors — not, on the current text, to an individual worker’s own lawsuit. If signed, the law would become operative on 1 July 2027.

Why it matters

Any employer using AI-assisted scoring, monitoring, or scheduling tools to inform discipline or termination decisions — and any HR-tech vendor selling those tools into California — would need to redesign the decision workflow around mandatory human review before this becomes operative. For workers, the bill creates a paper trail: written notice, a named human reviewer, and a right to request the data used against them. For buyers evaluating AI-in-HR vendors right now, SB 947’s fate is a leading indicator of where other states are likely to land next.

What the bill actually does

SB 947 amends the California Labor Code to define an ADS as “any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence” that is “used to assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking and materially impacts natural persons,” per the bill’s current text.

Section 1522(b)(1) of the amended bill states an employer “shall not rely solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary, termination, or deactivation decision.” Where an ADS is used as the primary basis for such a decision, Section 1522(b)(2) requires the employer to “direct a human reviewer to conduct an independent investigation and compile corroborating or supporting information for the decision” before acting on it. The bill also requires employers to give workers timely, written, plain-language notice after an ADS is used in a decision affecting them, and lets workers request a copy of their own ADS-related data once a year.

This is a live, moving bill text. The version described above reflects the amendment dated 21 August 2026 — the most recent one on file with the Legislature as of this writing.

The vote record, precisely

Introduced by Senator Jerry McNerney (D-San Joaquin), with Senator Reyes and Assemblymembers Kalra and Ward among the bill’s coauthors, on 2 February 2026. Passed the full Senate floor vote on 19 May 2026, twenty-nine ayes to nine noes, with two members not voting. Referred to the Assembly, where it passed the Labor and Employment Committee, Privacy and Consumer Protection, Judiciary, and Appropriations (13 August, ten ayes to four). On 21 August 2026, the bill was “read third time and amended” and “ordered to third reading” in the Assembly — meaning it is queued for an Assembly floor vote that, as of this writing, has not yet occurred.

Senator McNerney’s own office called the measure “commonsense guardrails” that “will ensure that California businesses do not rely entirely on robo bosses to fire or discipline workers.” This is McNerney’s second attempt: an earlier, related bill, SB 7, passed the Legislature in 2025 but was vetoed by Governor Newsom, who cited concerns about “unfocused notification requirements” and “overly broad restrictions.” SB 947’s narrower, post-use notice requirement appears to respond directly to that veto rationale, though neither office has said so explicitly for the 2026 bill.

A discrepancy worth flagging

Some secondary coverage and at least one law-firm client alert describe SB 947’s enforcement as running through private lawsuits in addition to the Labor Commissioner and public prosecutors. A direct read of the current bill text does not support that: Section 1526.1 assigns enforcement to the Labor Commissioner and to public prosecutors, and describes civil actions as being brought by those two enforcers, not by an individual worker suing on their own behalf. No explicit private-right-of-action language could be located anywhere in the current bill text. This may reflect a difference between an earlier bill draft and the 21 August 2026 amendment, or an imprecision in secondary reporting.

What this means for buyers

Employers and HR-tech vendors operating in California should treat SB 947 as a strong signal, not yet a compliance deadline. If it clears the Assembly floor, returns to the Senate for concurrence, and is signed, the operative date is 1 July 2027 — giving roughly a year’s runway. Vendors building AI-assisted performance-management or workforce-monitoring tools should already be able to answer, in writing, which decisions their system makes “solely” and which retain a documented human reviewer, since that distinction is the bill’s entire compliance hinge.

What would change our reading

An Assembly floor vote — pass, fail, or further amendment — would be the single biggest update. So would a concurrence vote sending the bill back to the Senate, any veto message from Governor Newsom, or confirmation of a private right of action in a version of the text not reviewed here.

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