Twenty-one artificial intelligence bills are sitting on the third-reading files of the California Legislature this weekend, and every one of them dies at the end of business on Monday if it does not get a floor vote first.
Sacramento adjourns sine die on Aug. 31. Lawmakers are expected to work through Saturday and Sunday clearing a backlog that includes the most aggressive package of workplace AI regulation any American state has attempted — a slate of bills sponsored by the California Federation of Labor Unions that would ban AI-only firings, force 90 days notice before automation-driven mass layoffs, outlaw biometric workplace surveillance, and stand up a state AI Standards and Safety Commission. Three AI-related bills cleared final approval during the week of Aug. 24. The other 21 are a coin flip.
The bills that made it out this week were the uncontroversial ones. AB 2392, an ed-tech measure requiring community colleges and CSU to convene a working group on generative AI procurement standards, passed the full Senate 38-0 on Aug. 26 and cleared Assembly concurrence 79-0. AB 2656, by Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, requires state and local public employers to give a recognized employee organization 45 days written notice before developing, purchasing or deploying generative AI to perform work inside a represented job classification; it passed the Senate 39-0 on Aug. 24 and cleared concurrence 74-2 on Aug. 25. AB 2025, a real estate disclosure bill covering AI-altered listing photos, went to the governor on Aug. 25 after a 39-1 Senate vote and a 78-0 Assembly concurrence.
The contested measures are all still pending. SB 947, Sen. Jerry McNerney’s No Robo Bosses Act, cleared Assembly Appropriations 10-4 on Aug. 13 and was ordered to third reading Aug. 21. It would bar employers from relying solely on automated decision systems to fire or discipline workers. SB 951, by Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, survived the suspense file 10-3 and was amended into third reading on Aug. 24; it would require 90 days notice to workers, local government and the Employment Development Department when technology displaces 25 workers or 25 percent of a workforce, whichever is less — a threshold far below the 50-employee, 60-day trigger in the existing Cal-WARN Act. AB 1883, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan’s workplace surveillance bill, and SB 813, McNerney’s AI Standards and Safety Commission, were amended into third reading on Aug. 24 and Aug. 26 respectively. So were chatbot safety bill SB 1119, synthetic performer disclosure bill SB 1050, and surveillance pricing ban AB 2564.
Why it matters
California is not merely one more state legislature. It is, functionally, the compliance floor for the American AI industry, and the labor package now on the floor would be the first serious attempt anywhere in the United States to regulate what AI does to employment rather than what it says to consumers. Most of the 85 AI laws enacted across 27 states so far in 2026 concern deepfakes, chatbots and disclosure. Very few touch hiring, firing or displacement.
The sponsors are explicit that displacement is the point. “The reach and speed at which AI is transforming our economy is astounding,” Reyes said when she introduced SB 951 in February. “Recent announcements that tens of thousands of jobs will once again be sacrificed to automation is a stark reminder that we cannot rely on CEOs of the richest and most powerful companies in the world to protect workers and communities. Lawmakers must step in to do that work.”
McNerney has pitched SB 947 in narrower terms. “SB 947 establishes commonsense guardrails to ensure that California businesses are not relying on robo bosses to fire or discipline workers,” he said. “AI must remain a tool controlled by humans, not the other way around.”
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO — which represents roughly 2.3 million members across some 1,300 affiliated unions — framed the package in generational terms. “Billionaire CEOs using technology to replace their workers is nothing new,” she said. “NAFTA and unchecked deindustrialization devastated working class communities, leading to mass unemployment. Artificial intelligence threatens to do worse.”
The business coalition sees the same bills as an affordability problem dressed up as a worker-protection problem, and it has a real argument. The California Chamber of Commerce added SB 951 and four other AI measures to its 2026 Affordability Agenda cost-driver list in April, bringing that list to 26 bills. “These bills take the wrong approach toward the development and use of artificial intelligence,” CalChamber President and CEO Jennifer Barrera said. “They would worsen the state’s affordability crisis, weakening industries that generate billions of dollars in tax revenues for government services.”
The Chamber’s specific objection to SB 951 is not frivolous: the bill sweeps in hiring and staffing reductions attributable to technology, not just layoffs, and allows third parties to file claims — a structure that in California has historically generated litigation volume well beyond what sponsors project. On SB 947, CalChamber argues the human-review and independent-verification mandates are impractical for small employers who bought an off-the-shelf HR tool.
What to watch
Adjournment is only the first gate. Gov. Gavin Newsom then has 30 days to sign or veto, putting the deadline around Sept. 30 — and Newsom vetoed an earlier version of the No Robo Bosses Act last year. A termed-out governor writing a final legislative legacy while positioning nationally is a genuinely unpredictable variable.
The second gate is federal. The administration’s executive order on AI preemption stood up a Justice Department AI Litigation Task Force in January, charged with challenging state AI laws as unconstitutional burdens on interstate commerce, and directed Commerce to condition $42 billion in BEAD broadband funds on the repeal of state AI rules it deems onerous. Any California employment-AI statute signed this fall becomes an obvious early target. Whether these bills survive the weekend is a Sacramento question. Whether they survive 2027 is a federal one.
“Billionaire CEOs using technology to replace their workers is nothing new. Artificial intelligence threatens to do worse.”— Lorena Gonzalez, President, California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO