California's Senate concurred in Assembly amendments to SB 947 by 28 votes to 10 on 31 August, sending Senator Jerry McNerney's bill to the governor. It prohibits employers from relying solely on an automated decision system when disciplining or dismissing a worker.
The actual mechanism
Where an ADS was the primary basis for the action, a human reviewer must independently investigate and confirm the system's conclusion — reviewing the output is not enough; the reviewer has to reach the finding themselves. Workers gain a right to written notice and to a description of the data the system used about them, exercisable once every twelve months. The operative date in the text is 1 July 2027.
What the shorthand loses
"California bans AI in HR" is wrong twice over. The bill permits automated systems in employment decisions; it forbids them being the sole basis for adverse ones. But the text also contains two prohibitions that are not about human review at all, and that summaries reliably drop: inferring a worker's protected status, and using predictive behavioural analysis for employment decisions. Those are flat bans, and no amount of human oversight cures them.
Enforcement and carve-outs
Penalties are $500 per violation, investigated by the Labor Commissioner, with public prosecutors able to bring civil actions; injunctive relief and fee recovery are available. Exemptions cover defence and aerospace operations, and collective bargaining agreements that expressly waive the rights.
Where this sits
It has passed both chambers and is unsigned. Existing US rules on algorithmic management are sectoral — warehouse quotas, some city hiring-audit ordinances. A general human-in-the-loop standard for terminations, applying to every employer in the state, would be the first of its kind, which is precisely why the governor's decision by 30 September matters more than the vote tally. SB 947 also travels alongside SB 951, which would force employers to disclose the AI system behind a mass layoff — one bill governs how a firing decision is made, the other what has to be said about it afterwards.