California Workplace AI: What Stalled Legislation Reveals About Employer Disclosure, Documentation, And Oversight Obligations – New Technology
Publish Date: 2026-04-06 06:17:00
Source Domain: www.mondaq.com
Foley & Lardner are most popular:
- within Coronavirus (COVID-19) topic(s)
Although California’s Senate Bill 7 did not become law
and California’s Assembly Bill 1018 is currently inactive, both
bills preview the types of disclosure, documentation, and oversight
obligations that California lawmakers have been considering in
connection with employers’ use of automated tools in employment
decisions.
Many employers are already using automated tools to screen
applicants, evaluate performance, and support hiring and
disciplinary decisions. In some cases, however, the people using
those tools do not understand them well. For example, employers may
not know what inputs the tool relies on, how it generates outputs,
or how the tool applies those outputs in
“decision-making.” That gap creates compliance risk under
existing law because the employer may not be able to explain or
substantiate how a particular employment decision was made.
Since October 1, 2025, California employers have been operating
under the state’s Civil Rights Council’s
automated-decision-system regulations, which clarify how existing
anti-discrimination law applies when employers use artificial
intelligence, algorithms, and other automated tools in employment
decisions. Those regulations reinforce that employers remain
responsible for the use and outcomes of these tools.
Against that backdrop, the California Legislature’s two
recent AI-related proposals are best understood as addressing a
related issue: not only whether an automated system produces a
discriminatory result but whether the employer can demonstrate how
that system is used, what it relies on, and what controls govern
its use.
First, the now-failed Senate Bill 7, sometimes referred to as
the “No Robo Bosses Act,” would have directly regulated
employer use of automated decision…
