Senate Bill 947 has been on Governor Gavin Newsom's desk since September 9, and he has until September 30, 2026, to act on it. The bill regulates how employers use automated tools in discipline and termination decisions, not hiring, and that gap is exactly why hiring teams should read it closely.

A Deadline That Arrived Fast

Senate Bill 947 passed the California Assembly on August 30, 2026, and the Senate concurred in the Assembly's amendments the next day by a vote of 28 to 10. The bill was enrolled and presented to the governor on September 9, 2026. Under Article IV, Section 10 of the California Constitution, a bill passed before September 1 of the session's second year and in the governor's possession on or after September 1 becomes law if it is not returned by September 30. Governor Newsom can sign it, veto it, or let it take effect without his signature.

By the time this post reaches you, he may have already acted. That does not make the bill less worth understanding. Senate Bill 947 was introduced by Senator Jerry McNerney, and it is his second attempt at this law in two years. His 2025 bill, Senate Bill 7, was reported as the No Robo Bosses Act and reached far more employment decisions, including hiring, promotion, discipline, and termination. Governor Newsom vetoed it on October 13, 2025, and HR Dive reported that he called it "unfocused" and "overly broad." Senate Bill 947 is the narrower rewrite.

What the Bill Would Require

Senate Bill 947 would add Part 5.5.5, beginning at Section 1520, to Division 2 of the California Labor Code. It defines an automated decision system (ADS) as any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence that issues simplified output, such as a score, classification, or recommendation, used to assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking. That definition is broad enough to cover a simple pass or fail filter as easily as a sophisticated model. What limits this bill is not the definition of the technology. It is the definition of the decision.

The core rule sits in Section 1522. In the words of the enrolled bill: "An employer shall not rely solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary or termination decision."

The same section spells out what compliance looks like. If an employer primarily relies on an automated decision system's output to discipline or terminate a worker, a human must corroborate the decision using the data that produced the output or other relevant supporting information, such as supervisor evaluations, personnel files, work product, peer reviews, or witness interviews. If the output cannot be corroborated, the employer cannot use it. Section 1524 adds a written postuse notice: an employer that primarily relied on an automated decision system must tell the affected employee so in writing at the time it delivers the decision, along with a human contact and the employee's right to a description of the data used. Violations carry a civil penalty of five hundred dollars per violation under Section 1526.1, enforceable by the Labor Commissioner, by a public prosecutor, or in some circumstances through a civil action.

A Narrower Bill on Purpose

Read the operative text of Senate Bill 947 closely and one omission stands out. The words hiring, applicant, recruitment, candidate, and selection do not appear anywhere in it. Senate Bill 7 was different. It reached across the employment relationship, from hiring through termination, and the governor's objection to its breadth is part of the record. Senate Bill 947 responds by narrowing the scope to the point in employment where the stakes are highest and the record is most concrete: taking away someone's job, or discipline that could lead there.

For a staffing firm or an employer built around outbound recruiting, that narrower scope might read as a reason to stop paying attention. It should not be.

Why Hiring Teams Should Not Treat This as a Pass

Senate Bill 947 does not reach hiring decisions, but California employers who use automated tools to screen or rank candidates are not writing on a blank page. The state's Civil Rights Council regulations on automated-decision systems took effect on October 1, 2025, and they apply existing antidiscrimination law across employment, including hiring. According to the Council's announcement, the regulations make clear that "the use of an automated-decision system may violate California law if it harms applicants or employees based on protected characteristics, such as gender, race, or disability," and they require employers to keep employment records, including automated-decision data, for at least four years. See California ADS Compliance: What Every Employer Using AI Hiring Tools Needs to Know for the specifics, and the California compliance overview for how a screening tool should be built around them.

Put the two together and a pattern appears rather than a gap. California is converging on one standard: a human being must review, corroborate, and take responsibility for an employment decision that an algorithm helped shape. Senate Bill 947 is one more data point in that direction, not an exception to it. Employers who wait for a hiring-specific statute before building a human review habit are reading the trend line backward.

Treat an automated score as the start of a human decision, never a substitute for one, and keep the record that proves it.

Building a Human Review Standard You Can Use Now

None of this work depends on what the governor does by September 30. Four steps cover most of it.

Inventory every tool that scores, ranks, flags, or recommends. That includes applicant tracking system filters, resume screening software, interview analysis tools, and performance platforms, not only products marketed as artificial intelligence.

Write down what human review means at your company before you need it. Decide in advance what the reviewer's file looks like: the notes, the source documents, the sign-off, so a person under deadline pressure has a checklist rather than a blank page.

Keep a record of every adverse action that touched an automated tool, with the date, the data reviewed, and the name of the person who made the final call. Bill or no bill, this is the record a regulator or an opposing attorney asks for first.

Read the vendor contract. Ask what data the tool used to reach its output, whether that data is available to you on request, and whether the vendor will support a compliant notice if you ever need to send one.

Tools built for this moment make the second and third steps easier. TrueScan HR returns a full skills breakdown with every match score instead of a bare number, so the person making the final call has something concrete to review and document. See How TrueScan HR Scores a Resume for how that works, and Why Keyword Matching Is Not Hiring Intelligence for why a bare score was never a sufficient basis for a decision on its own.

The Bottom Line

Governor Newsom will act on Senate Bill 947 by September 30, 2026, or the bill will become law without his signature. If it becomes law, the human corroboration requirement for discipline and termination decisions becomes operative on July 1, 2027. If it is vetoed, the idea goes back to the Legislature for another attempt. Neither outcome changes what a well run hiring team should already be doing: treating an automated score as the start of a human decision and keeping the record that proves it. Build that habit now, in hiring and everywhere else an algorithm touches an employment decision, and the next bill becomes a formality instead of a scramble.

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