Labor & Employment

As we enter 2026, a new wave of labor and employment laws is set to reshape workplace requirements for California employers. From expanded paid family leave and new AI regulations to strengthened pay equity and whistleblower protections, these changes carry significant implications for businesses across the state. This client alert highlights the most impactful legislative […]

As employers prepare for 2026, it is increasingly important to monitor not only state-level employment law changes but also the wave of local ordinances emerging across California. With 58 counties and hundreds of cities, which include some of the largest and most heavily regulated jurisdictions in the country, California’s patchwork of local rules continues to […]

It has been more than a year since SB 553 (California’s comprehensive workplace-violence prevention law) became mandatory for most California employers. Employers now enter the first cycle of annual review and retraining, and Cal/OSHA’s expectations are rising. Before SB 553, workplace-violence policies were largely elective and inconsistent. Plans were often generic, rarely updated, and reactive […]

California’s AB 288 creates a major potential shift in labor-relations enforcement. For the first time, the state’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), traditionally limited to public-sector labor disputes, would be able to hear certain private-sector representation petitions and unfair labor practice (ULP) charges when the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is delayed or unable […]

Effective October 1, 2025, new California regulations make explicit what was already implicit: the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA)’s anti-discrimination rules fully apply to “automated-decision systems”  (ADS) used in employment. That includes not only sophisticated artificial intelligence tools, but any computational process that helps decide who gets hired, promoted, disciplined, or otherwise receives an […]

Beginning January 1, 2026, California employers will enter a new legal landscape when it comes to training-repayment agreements, onboarding costs, and other contract terms that impose financial penalties when an employee leaves. Assembly Bill 692, now signed into law, effectively prohibits “quit fees” and most forms of repayment provisions tied to continued employment, declaring them […]

UPDATE: On December 18, 2025, the Senate confirmed James Murphy and Scott Mayer to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Crystal Carey as the NLRB’s General Counsel. Murphy’s and Mayer’s confirmations will restore the NLRB’s quorum and give the Board a Republican majority that is likely to create employer-friendly precedent as they address the […]

California Labor Code section 1198.5 currently requires employers to maintain and make available to current and former employees personnel records “relating to the employee’s performance or to any grievance concerning the employee.” Effective January 1, 2026 the scope of employer obligations under section 1198.5 will expand. Specifically, pursuant to SB 513, employers must maintain education […]

Effective January 1, 2026, SB 303 will add a section to the Government Code to address disclosures made during employer-sponsored “bias mitigation or bias elimination training, education, and activities” provided “for the purpose of educating employees on understanding, recognizing, or acknowledging the influence of conscious and unconscious thought processes and their associated impacts.” Specifically, the […]