California Lawmakers Return to a Pile of AI Bills as the Session Resumes

California Lawmakers Return to a Pile of AI Bills as the Session Resumes

SACRAMENTO — California legislators walked back into the Capitol on Monday, August 3, after a monthlong summer recess and went almost immediately to work deciding which of the year's artificial-intelligence bills will live and which will die. The Senate Appropriations Committee opened a lightning-round voting hearing at 10 a.m., churning through Assembly measures that have crossed into the upper chamber. The Assembly Appropriations Committee follows with its own hearing Wednesday, August 5, at 9 a.m. Together the two sittings function as the session's most concentrated triage event: dozens of AI measures parked on the committees' "suspense files" will advance or expire within hours of one another.

The stakes are national. According to the Transparency Coalition, an AI-policy nonprofit that publishes a weekly legislative tracker, 85 new AI-related laws have already been enacted across 27 states in 2026 — the highest volume of state AI lawmaking in U.S. history at this point in a calendar year. California, which entered the recess with roughly 30 AI bills still alive, accounts for the single largest batch of pending decisions. It also already carries a thick statute book, including the AI Transparency Act (SB 942) and last year's landmark Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act (SB 53), the Sen. Scott Wiener measure Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September 2025 after vetoing its more aggressive predecessor, SB 1047.

What Is on the Table

The surviving bills touch nearly every corner of daily life where AI intersects with the public.

Frontier-model governance runs through SB 813, Sen. Jerry McNerney's proposal to create a California AI Standards and Safety Commission — the first state body empowered to recognize and oversee private organizations that write AI safety standards. It cleared the Senate 31-7 in January and was re-referred to Assembly Appropriations on July 1, meaning its fate rests on Wednesday's hearing.

Child safety dominates a second cluster. Companion bills AB 2023 and SB 1119, authored by Assemblymembers Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and Buffy Wicks with Sen. Steve Padilla, would impose the nation's strongest safeguards on AI "companion chatbots" aimed at minors, requiring disclosure, self-harm protocols and heightened protections for children. SB 1119 passed the Senate 39-0. Padilla's SB 867 would go further, banning AI companion chatbots from children's toys, while SB 1015, by Sen. Tony Strickland, would extend California's laws on criminal contact with minors to threats and extortion carried out through AI-generated deepfake imagery.

"When a conversation between children and a chatbot goes wrong, the consequences can be dire," Padilla said in advancing the chatbot measures. "We have seen the consequences of our inaction towards the dangers posed by social media, and the stakes are too high to make the same mistakes again."

Workplace AI forms a third front. AB 1883 (Assemblymember Isaac Bryan), which passed the Assembly 52-12, and SB 947 (McNerney and Sen. Sabrina Cervantes Reyes), which cleared the Senate 29-9, would restrict employers' use of automated monitoring and decision systems — the first California worker protections aimed squarely at algorithmic management. Reyes's SB 951 would require 90 days' notice before AI-driven layoffs affecting 25% or more of a covered firm's workforce. Copyright, healthcare and real-estate disclosure bills, including Bauer-Kahan's AI-training-data measure AB 412, are also in the queue.

Not everyone is convinced lawmakers will hold the line. "It's really important that the state not continue to concede to big tech companies who are very much in bed with the president," said Veena Dubal, a researcher and prominent critic of workplace AI, urging legislators to push the employment bills through despite industry opposition.

Why It Matters

With Congress gridlocked, California has become the country's de facto AI regulator. Its market is large enough that compliance rules written in Sacramento effectively set the floor for products sold nationwide, and other states increasingly copy its statutory language. That role now collides directly with Washington. President Trump's Executive Order 14365, signed in December 2025, directed the Justice Department to stand up an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI laws on Commerce Clause and preemption grounds; in April 2026 the department intervened against Colorado's algorithmic-discrimination law, the first federal court challenge to a state AI statute. A Republican push for an outright federal moratorium on state AI laws was rejected 99-1 in the Senate last year. Every bill that clears the appropriations hearings this week deepens the patchwork the administration is trying to preempt — and sharpens the state-versus-federal fight over who governs the technology.

What to Watch

- August 5: The Assembly Appropriations Committee's suspense hearing decides the fate of Senate bills, including SB 813, SB 947 and SB 951. Any measure the committee holds is dead for the session. - Floor votes: Bills that survive still need full chamber approval and must reach Newsom's desk before the legislature's September 12 deadline. - The governor's pen: Newsom, who vetoed SB 1047 but signed SB 53, remains the last gate — and his calculations are increasingly shaped by the federal preemption pressure bearing down on Sacramento.