A supervisor sees a system flag, checks a box marked “reviewed,” and approves a termination. Has a human reviewed the decision? In an ordinary sense, perhaps. California’s SB 947 asks a more specific question: if the employer primarily relied on the system’s output, did a human corroborate the decision with relevant information? The statutory question is not satisfied merely by the presence of a person in the workflow; when primary reliance exists, the law requires a human to corroborate the decision using relevant information.

SB 947, titled “Employment: automated decision systems” in its legislative text and commonly called the No Robo Bosses Act, was approved September 30, 2026, and chaptered as Chapter 859. It adds Labor Code Part 5.5.5, sections 1520 through 1526.7. The part becomes operative July 1, 2027. The statutory words are narrower than several descriptions of earlier drafts, which required an “independent investigation” whenever an automated output assisted a decision.

Which employers, employees, and tools are covered?

Section 1520 defines an employer as a person that directly or indirectly, through an agent or another person, employs or controls a person’s wages, hours, or working conditions. It expressly includes state and local public entities, specified education systems, labor contractors, farm labor contractors, and foreign labor contractors. The University of California is included upon agreement by the regents. “Employee” means a person employed by an employer; “employ” means to engage, suffer, or permit to work. The operative discipline and termination rules speak of employees, rather than the broader “worker” and deactivation language used in early drafts.

An ADS is a computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or AI that issues a simplified output, such as a score, classification, or recommendation, used to assist or replace human discretionary decision making and that materially impacts natural persons. An ADS output includes information, data, assumptions, predictions, scoring, recommendations, decisions, and conclusions generated by the system. The definition excludes a spam filter, firewall, antivirus software, identity and access management tool, calculator, database, dataset, and other compilation of data. A product’s AI branding alone does not establish that this statutory definition is met.

Section 1522(a) separately forbids using an ADS to prevent compliance with or violate labor, safety, employment, or civil rights law; to infer an employee’s protected status under Government Code section 12940; or to predict and take adverse action against a worker for exercising legal rights. The human-corroboration mechanics in section 1522(b), however, are tied specifically to disciplinary or termination decisions. Hiring, promotion, scheduling, and other decisions are not automatically subject to that particular review rule.

Two thresholds: “solely” and “primarily”

Section 1522(b)(1) says an employer shall not rely solely on an ADS when making a disciplinary or termination decision. This is an outright restriction. Adding a person who merely transmits a system decision may not cure sole reliance if the person contributes no decision-making basis; the statute does not supply a separate test for that scenario, so it should not be treated as a settled interpretation.

Section 1522(b)(2) addresses a different circumstance: an employer primarily relies upon an ADS output to make such a decision. In that case, the employer must direct a human to corroborate the decision. Primary reliance is not forbidden outright, but it activates the corroboration rule, the written postuse notice in section 1524, and the employee data-description right in section 1522(d). An ADS that merely appears somewhere in a workflow does not, by that fact alone, satisfy the primary-reliance trigger.

Neither “solely relies” nor “primarily relies” is defined in Part 5.5.5. The first phrase points to exclusive reliance in ordinary usage; the second leaves a harder question of degree and causation. The text gives no percentage, scoring formula, presumption for a manager’s sign-off, or safe harbor for adding one other piece of evidence. Whether the output was the principal basis for a particular decision will likely turn on the actual workflow and record. That is an interpretation of the text, not a judicial or agency test announced by SB 947.

What the human must actually do

The operative verb is “corroborate.” Section 1522(b)(2) requires the employer to direct a human to corroborate the decision using either data collected or used to produce the ADS output or other relevant corroborating or supporting information. The “or” matters: the statute permits supporting information outside the system’s underlying data. It does not invariably require the reviewer to inspect every input record or reverse engineer the model. It also does not say that looking only at the output, with no relevant corroborating information, is enough.

The statute offers a nonexclusive list of possible information: supervisory or managerial evaluations, personnel files, employee work product, peer reviews, and witness interviews, which may include relevant online customer reviews. These are examples, not a compulsory five-part checklist. Relevance and ability to corroborate the decision matter more than the document category. A manager’s evaluation may be useful if it addresses the conduct at issue; a generic performance rating may say little about a specific flagged incident.

The text does not define how much supporting evidence is sufficient, how conflicts between sources should be weighed, or whether a reviewer must speak with the employee. A sensible operational reading is that the reviewer should be able to identify information that supports the decision and the output’s factual basis. That is a practical inference from “corroborate,” not an extra procedure enacted by the Legislature. A review that does not examine relevant corroborating or supporting information would be difficult to square with the statute’s express corroboration requirement, but the bill does not prescribe a universal review protocol.

What happens when corroboration fails?

Section 1522(c) is categorical about the output: if the employer cannot corroborate it, or the human reviewer concludes it is inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, the employer shall not use the ADS output to make the disciplinary or termination decision. The provision does not say the employer must abandon every possible employment action. It addresses use of that output. A decision based on genuinely separate evidence would require its own assessment under other applicable law; calling the same automated recommendation “independent” would not change what information actually drove the decision.

This clause distinguishes a real check from a rubber stamp. The reviewer has to be able to reach a negative result that changes the output’s use. Yet SB 947 does not expressly require the reviewer to be outside the management chain, to be someone other than the employee’s manager, or to hold a specifically stated override power. Employers may choose to give reviewers clear authority to stop reliance on an unsupported output, since the employer must comply with section 1522(c), but that workflow design is a governance recommendation rather than a quoted statutory personnel requirement.

Notice and access are narrower than some summaries suggest

When an employer primarily relied on an ADS for discipline or termination, section 1524 requires a written postuse notice when it informs the affected employee of the decision. It must be a separate, stand-alone communication in plain language, in the language normally used for employee communications, delivered by a simple method such as email, hyperlink, or another written format. It must say the employer primarily relied on an ADS; that a human reviewed the decision and corroborated the output; whom the employee can contact for more information and for the data-description right; and that retaliation for exercising rights under the part is prohibited.

Section 1522(d) gives an employee, on request, a meaningful, objective description of the employee’s own data used by the ADS when the employer primarily used the ADS for the decision. Section 1522(e) requires that description to anonymize other customers’, employees’, or individuals’ personal information. The final text does not promise a copy of every input, the system’s score, a model explanation, a written account of the reviewer’s reasoning, or all corroborating evidence. The required notice reports that review and corroboration occurred; it is not a statutory written opinion explaining why discipline was justified.

What an earlier SB 947 draft would have required

The introduced February 2 version used a broader trigger: whenever an ADS output assisted discipline, termination, or deactivation, an employer would have had to direct a human reviewer to conduct an independent investigation and compile corroborating or supporting information. It covered “workers,” including independent contractors, and deactivation decisions. The chaptered version instead uses “primarily relies,” “employee,” and discipline or termination, and says to direct a human to corroborate the decision using specified kinds of information. It no longer says “independent investigation” or “compile” evidence.

The introduced draft also would have provided a copy of up to 12 months of the worker’s own data and, in response to a data request, specific input and output data, corroborating information, vendor and product names, and any completed impact assessments. The final law substitutes a meaningful, objective description of the employee’s own data used by the ADS. Its notice no longer claims an independent investigation occurred. Early descriptions of a general customer-rating input ban, deactivation protections, or a standalone worker private damages action likewise should not be carried into the final bill. The final text does retain a written postuse notice, but at the narrower primary-reliance threshold.

Neither the chaptered review clause nor its notice provision expressly creates an employee appeal, a required internal audit, a retention period for corroboration files, or a written reviewer report. An employer might maintain records to show what happened and answer a later inquiry; that is prudent governance, not a freestanding SB 947 recordkeeping mandate. Other California laws can impose distinct duties. The statute’s express CCPA provision, for example, preserves duly adopted California Privacy Protection Agency automated-decisionmaking regulations for businesses subject to the CCPA.

The unresolved line around primary reliance

A recommendation can shape a decision without being the only evidence. If a system ranks incidents and a manager reviews only the top-ranked case, did the employer primarily rely on the output? If a manager gathers independent records after a flag, when does the new material become the primary basis? SB 947 does not answer those fact patterns. The statutory burden provision in section 1526.1(c) matters in an enforcement proceeding: once ADS use has been demonstrated for the specified decision, the employer must demonstrate that it did not primarily rely on the ADS or that it complied with sections 1522 and 1524. That provision contains the word “deactivation,” even though the operative review provisions speak of discipline and termination. The mismatch is in the enacted text; its effect remains unresolved.

No implementing rule or court decision in the sources reviewed supplies a binding numeric meaning of “primarily.” Employers should monitor Labor Commissioner guidance and litigation, and should map where an output actually enters the decision: whether it identifies cases for review, narrows what a reviewer sees, supplies the principal allegation, or remains only one among several independently assessed facts. These are questions to investigate, not announced legal thresholds.

Enforcement, exceptions, and dates

The Labor Commissioner may investigate, order specified temporary relief, issue citations, and file civil actions under section 1526.1(a). Public prosecutors may also enforce the part under subdivision (b). Violations carry a $500 civil penalty per violation. Subdivision (d) describes potential temporary or preliminary injunctive relief, punitive damages, attorney’s fees, costs, and other remedies in the specified superior-court actions. The final bill removed the introduced version’s express authorization for an individual worker or representative to bring a standalone damages action. This article therefore does not characterize SB 947 as creating a general standalone private right of action. Section 1526 bars retaliation for invoking the part’s rights or helping enforce them.

The part does not apply to parties covered by a collective bargaining agreement that clearly and unambiguously waives it, expressly addresses wages or earnings and working conditions, and protects against algorithmic management. Section 1526.6 has a narrow exception for ADS use required by or reasonably necessary to comply with specified federal statutes, regulations, or binding contracts concerning aircraft development or national security, military, space, or defense products and services, limited to covered operations. Section 1526.2 preserves local ordinances providing equal or greater protection; sections 1526.3–1526.4 coordinate overlapping state notices while preserving applicable CCPA rules. None of these provisions creates a blanket exemption for employers that label a system advisory.

The Governor signed SB 947 on September 30, 2026, and the Secretary of State chaptered it that day as Chapter 859. Section 1526.7 sets July 1, 2027, as the operative date for the entire new part. For preparation, employers can inventory ADS outputs used in discipline and termination, map who makes and reviews each decision, arrange access to relevant supporting information, train reviewers to identify missing or misleading outputs, and plan the statutory notice and request response. Written review records and vendor documentation can help make that process auditable, but SB 947 itself does not mandate a particular review form or audit schedule.

The practical question is therefore not whether a human appears somewhere in the process. It is whether, when an ADS output is the primary basis for discipline or termination, a human corroborates the decision with relevant information, and whether the employer refrains from using an output that fails that check. The precise boundary of primary reliance and the amount of evidence needed for corroboration await authoritative interpretation.