California has enacted SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act. It adds new Labor Code requirements for employers that use automated decision systems (ADS) to make disciplinary and termination decisions, and it takes effect July 1, 2027. Importantly, the No Robo Bosses Act makes clear that the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) also must be taken into account when certain automated decisionmaking technologies are used.
So, when applying this new law, organizations should consider not only this new law and their use of employee monitoring, performance management platforms and technologies which have entered the market over the last several years, but also the application of other regulatory and contractual obligations they may have, in particular the CCPA and similar privacy and data security laws.
Are monitoring platforms “automated decision systems”?
SB 947 defines an ADS as any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or AI that produces a simplified output, such as a score, classification, or recommendation, which is used to assist or replace human decisionmaking and materially impacts natural persons. The law carves out spam filters, firewalls, antivirus software, calculators, and databases.
“assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking”
Many monitoring platforms turn keystrokes, application use, idle time, and website activity into productivity scores, risk ratings, or “low performer” flags. Those outputs arguably...
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