Today is the constitutional deadline for Governor Gavin Newsom to act on the bills California’s legislature passed before it adjourned on 31 August. Several of them govern artificial intelligence, and the mechanism matters as much as the list: a bill the governor neither signs nor vetoes by 30 September becomes law without his signature.
The most consequential of the remaining measures is SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act, which was enrolled and presented to the governor on 9 September. It would prohibit employers from relying solely on an automated decision system to discipline or dismiss a worker, and require human review. If enacted it becomes operative on 1 July 2027.
What else is still on the desk
Kelley Drye’s tracker, updated on 29 September, lists five other AI measures awaiting action. SB 1000 would amend the California AI Transparency Act to remove the one-million-monthly-user threshold for covered providers and replace the AI detection tool requirement with a disclosure verification tool; it carries an urgency clause, so it would take effect immediately on signing. SB 1111 covers digital replica protections. AB 1883 addresses workplace neural data and emotional-state surveillance. AB 2713 would require an inspection interface for AI provenance data. AB 2025 would require disclosure of AI-altered rental listings.
Read together, that is a legislature regulating specific applications rather than the models underneath them: hiring and firing, the workplace body, rental listings, synthetic likeness, provenance metadata. None of it licenses a model or caps a training run.
The deadline structure
California’s rule applies because the legislature adjourned on 31 August. Bills passed before 1 September and delivered to the governor on or after that date must be signed or vetoed by 30 September; anything left untouched becomes law. That makes silence a decision with the same legal effect as a signature, which is not true in most states.
The month behind it
Newsom has already signed a substantial AI package this session. On 9 September he approved SB 813, requiring a state agency to establish a process for selecting and regulating independent AI verification organisations by 1 January 2028, and AB 1405, mandating an AI auditor registry by 1 January 2029. On 10 September he signed SB 1119, setting a safety framework for companion chatbots, and SB 867, banning companion chatbots in toys through 2031. On 28 September he signed AB 1609, which requires large businesses to disclose that a customer service chatbot is not human and to offer a human agent within 15 minutes.
What to watch
The signal to read is SB 947. It is the bill that would reach furthest into ordinary employment, and it is the one business groups have argued hardest against. A veto would show the limits of this legislature’s appetite; a signature, or silence, would make California the first large jurisdiction to require a human in the loop before a machine ends a job.
