California wants employers to name the AI that took the jobs. New York asked politely and got zero answers.
The bill rewrites the state's mass-layoff law so that a notice caused by automation must say so on its first line, list the job functions being automated and identify the type of AI system doing it. It passed both chambers on the last day of session and sits on the governor's desk with two companion bills.
Every AI layoff story this year has had the same hole in it. Companies announce cuts, analysts attribute them to automation, and the companies themselves say as little as the law allows, which is nothing. California's legislature voted on August 31 to close that hole. Senate Bill 951, by Senator Reyes with Assemblymembers Bauer-Kahan and Lowenthal as coauthors, was enrolled on September 4 and now waits for Governor Newsom, who has until the end of the month to sign or veto the bills sent to him at the close of session.
The bill amends Cal-WARN, the state's version of the federal plant-closing law. Today an employer with 75 or more workers must give 60 days notice before a mass layoff of 50 or more people in a 30-day window. SB 951 keeps that and adds a category it calls technological displacement: a layoff, relocation or termination "caused in whole or in substantial part by an AI system or other automated technology replacing or automating employment positions." When that applies, the notice must carry a heading at the top, "This notice is for a technology displacement," and it must state the number and classification of affected workers, "the job functions performed by those replaced workers that will be automated," and "the specific category or type of AI system or other automating technology that substantially resulted in technological displacement."
A public list, every quarter
The part that should get vendors' attention is what happens to the notices. The Employment Development Department already publishes WARN filings. Under SB 951 it must also "post a quarterly statewide summary of technology displacements reported pursuant to this article." That would create, for the first time anywhere in the United States, an official running record of which kinds of AI systems California employers say replaced their workers, updated four times a year, drawn from statements employers made under a legal duty to be accurate. The provision sunsets on January 1, 2029 unless renewed, which reads as a three-year experiment.
Some caution on the details. Several law-firm summaries circulating this summer describe an earlier draft with a 90-day notice period and a right for displaced workers to bid on their old jobs. The bill text as amended on August 21 and passed on August 31 says 60 days and contains no right-of-first-bid language. Whatever Newsom signs will be the version that counts, and we will report the chaptered text when it exists.
New York tried the polite version
The reason a mandatory heading matters is sitting in New York's filing cabinet. In March 2025, following a directive from Governor Hochul, New York's Department of Labor added a checkbox to its own WARN form asking whether "technological innovation or automation" contributed to a layoff, and requiring employers who ticked it to name the technology. A May 2026 review by the employment lawyers at Hunton Andrews Kurth found that in the first year, across more than 160 companies filing notices, "not a single notice has attributed layoffs to AI technology or automation." That was the same year layoffs cited AI more often than ever. We have not been able to confirm the count from the state's live dashboard as of this week, and we are treating the zero as a May figure until we can. The direction is not in doubt. Given a box to tick, employers did not tick it.
SB 951 is designed for that outcome. It does not ask whether automation was involved; it defines a category of layoff, attaches a heading to it and makes the omission a WARN violation rather than an unticked box. The judgment call moves from "did AI contribute" to "was this caused in whole or in substantial part by an AI system," which is still a judgment, but one a plaintiff's lawyer can later test against internal documents. That prospect is why the bill will be resisted by the same employers who told investors their agents would let them do more with fewer people.
The other two bills on the desk
SB 951 arrived at the governor's office alongside two companions we cover in a separate story: SB 947, which bars employers from relying solely on an automated system to discipline or fire someone, and AB 1609, which requires large companies to get a customer to a human within 15 minutes of asking. Together they are the most direct legislative response yet to agents as bosses, agents as replacements and agents as the only voice on the phone. For the vendors who sell those agents, the layoff-notice bill is the one with the longest tail. Workers are already suing over AI-selected layoffs. A quarterly state list of the systems involved would give the next lawsuit its exhibit A.
