SB 951

California Senate Bill 951, the Worker Technological Displacement Act, would require employers to give at least 90 days' advance notice before mass layoffs in which AI systems played a material role in selecting affected workers or in the decision to restructure. It builds on the federal WARN Act (29 USC Section 2102), which since 1988 has required 60 days' notice for mass layoffs affecting a site of 50 or more workers, or more than 500 workers overall.

SB 951 extends that notice period, adds an AI-material-role trigger rather than relying solely on headcount thresholds, and applies the obligation at the employer level rather than the individual site level, closing the tranche-structuring loophole that let some employers stay under WARN's radar. It sits within a broader pattern of US states legislating on AI's employment impact in the absence of federal action, even as a Trump administration directive instructs federal agencies to preempt exactly this kind of state law.