As remote and distributed workforces become more common, employers increasingly need to understand when California’s employment protections reach employees who live and work outside the state. The question arises across wage-and-hour rules, anti-discrimination protections, arrest-record restrictions, restrictive covenant provisions, and other employment statutes whenever a workforce, employer, or employment decision crosses state lines.
California courts generally recognize a presumption against extraterritoriality and presume that state statutes are intended to operate only within state borders. In the employment context, however, courts have not applied that presumption uniformly. Whether a particular California employment statute may reach out-of-state workers or conduct depends on the specific statute at issue. This remains a continuously evolving area of law that has generated significant judicial attention, including multiple California Supreme Court decisions, and may continue to develop as courts apply existing frameworks to new factual scenarios.
Most recently, on July 30, 2026, the California Court of Appeal in Saberin v. Alation, Inc. addressed the reach of two California statutes (Government Code §12952 and Labor Code §432.7) that restrict an employer’s use of arrest records. The court held that these statutes did not apply to a remote employee who lived and worked outside California, even though the employer was headquartered in California and had entered into...
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