Summary
On September 30, 2026, the last day he could act on bills from the 2025-26 session, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills dealing with artificial intelligence and related technology. The most prominent, SB 947 by Senator Jerry McNerney, the No Robo Bosses Act of 2026, bars California employers from relying solely on automated decision systems to fire or discipline workers and requires human oversight and verification when such systems assist those decisions. Newsom had vetoed an earlier version of the bill in October 2025. The same day he vetoed at least four other AI-related bills and signed an executive order directing state agencies to keep using the term "artificial intelligence."
What Happened
The governor's office listed the 13 signed bills in a release published at 23:01 UTC on September 30. Four concern the workplace: SB 947 (McNerney) on automated decision systems in employment; SB 951 (Eloise Gómez Reyes), which requires employers to disclose when a mass layoff, relocation or termination is caused by an AI system; and AB 1331 (Sade Elhawary) and AB 1883 (Isaac Bryan) on workplace surveillance tools, including a ban on surveillance tools in workplace bathrooms. The Associated Press reported that the package also bars employers from using AI to predict a worker's emotional state from biometric data. The other nine cover health care (AB 1979 by Mia Bonta and SB 503 by Akilah Weber Pierson, which preserve clinicians' professional judgment when clinical decision tools are used and require developers of those tools to take reasonable steps to reduce known or predictable bias), AI provenance and disclosure (AB 2713 by Buffy Wicks and SB 1000 by Josh Becker, both amending the California AI Transparency Act, including a prohibition on deleting digital watermarks), lawyers and judicial officers (SB 574 by Thomas Umberg, which bars attorneys from fully handing core legal work such as drafting briefs to AI), digital replicas and impersonation (SB 1111 by Angelique Ashby), procurement standards and training at public colleges (AB 2392 by Mike Fong), AI transparency and governance (SB 1159 by Christopher Cabaldon), and gene synthesis (AB 1864 by Marc Berman, which requires providers to screen customers and orders).
According to McNerney's office, SB 947 does three things: it bars employers from relying solely on an automated decision system to make a firing or disciplinary decision, requires human oversight and verification when an employer uses such a system to assist in those decisions, and requires employers to tell workers when one was used. It is enforced by the state Labor Commissioner, the Attorney General or local prosecutors. The bill was sponsored by the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO. McNerney said: "No worker should ever be fired or disciplined by a robo boss." The federation's president, Lorena Gonzalez, said of SB 947, SB 951, AB 1331 and AB 1883 that "by signing these four first-in-the-nation bills, Governor Newsom has shown the country how we can begin to put guardrails on AI at work," and added that "there is clearly still work to be done."
The bill is a second attempt. On October 13, 2025, Newsom vetoed SB 7, McNerney's first No Robo Bosses Act, which had also required notice to workers before employers used automated decision systems; his veto message said it proposed "overly broad restrictions" on how employers may use those tools. In his statement on the 2026 package, Newsom said: "AI should expand opportunity - not come at the expense of workers and families."
The governor's legislative update for the same day records the vetoes of AB 2575 (health care services: AI), AB 2656 (notice to public employees when AI performs work within the scope of their jobs), SB 903 (mental health professionals: AI) and SB 1130 (wearable recording devices). Newsom also signed Executive Order N-10-26, which the release describes as "permanently declaring Artificial Intelligence to be called 'Artificial Intelligence' in California." The AP reported that the order responds to President Donald Trump's recent instruction that U.S. diplomats use the term "super intelligence." At an hour-long news conference, Newsom criticized the absence of comprehensive federal AI legislation and said "we have to do a lot more in the absence of federal leadership," leaving open a special legislative session on AI.
Why It Matters
SB 947 is the first state law in the United States to prohibit employers from basing a firing or disciplinary decision solely on an automated system, and it is the first employment-specific AI statute to come out of the labor coalition that pushed SB 7 in 2025. It completes a sequence of California AI laws signed by Newsom in his final year: SB 53 on frontier-model transparency (2025), SB 813 and AB 1405 on independent verification organizations and auditor registration earlier in September 2026, and Executive Order N-9-26 on third-party oversight. The September 30 package moves the state's focus from frontier developers to deployers, specifically employers, health care providers and lawyers.
What is not yet known is how the "solely" standard will be read in practice. Industry groups argued during the session that the line between a tool that informs a decision and one that is its primary basis is hard to draw, and enforcement now runs through the Labor Commissioner, the Attorney General and local prosecutors rather than a single regulator. The vetoes also show the limits of the labor coalition's slate: the AP and the governor's own update show that bills on AI notice to public employees, mental health practice and wearable recording devices did not become law. Newsom leaves office in January 2027, so implementation and any follow-up legislation will fall to his successor.
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