California’s 2026 tech-policy session yields wins on workplace AI and youth online laws, privacy bills falter

California’s 2026 tech-policy session ended with a split verdict: lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom put new limits on some workplace uses of artificial intelligence and passed a package of youth online measures, but several high-profile privacy proposals were vetoed, narrowed or allowed to die. One of the marquee youth social-media laws, AB 1709, is already facing federal court challenges from some of the largest technology companies.

The mixed outcome was underscored this week when the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group, published a Nov. 5 recap of the session and said it had tracked nearly 100 bills over the 2025-2026 legislative term. The broad picture, based on bill actions and governor decisions in September, is that California moved aggressively in some areas of tech regulation while falling short in others.

The clearest substantive wins came in the workplace.

Newsom on Sept. 30 signed SB 947, a bill that limits how employers can use automated decision systems in firing or discipline decisions and adds notice, worker-information and human-oversight protections. In a press release announcing the measure and related bills, Newsom said, “AI should expand opportunity - not come at the expense of workers and families.”

He also signed AB 1883 the same day. That law bars certain workplace surveillance practices, including the use of tools that infer workers’ emotions or collect neural data. Together, the two measures mark one of the country’s more direct state-level efforts to set rules for how employers deploy AI and monitoring technologies on the job.

California also enacted a youth online package on Sept. 10. Newsom signed AB 1709, which his office described as prohibiting addictive social-media features for users under 16; AB 1856, which revised the state’s earlier digital age-assurance framework and, after amendments, exempted open-source operating systems; AB 2071, on digital wellness instruction; and AB 2298, which addresses cybersecurity in education standards. “Our children’s safety deserves to be at the center of every conversation about technology,” Newsom said in announcing those bills.

But that part of the agenda has already run into legal resistance. On Nov. 4 and 5, Google, Meta and TikTok filed federal lawsuits seeking to block AB 1709, according to Reuters. Reuters reported that Meta’s complaint argues, “The state cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, override Meta’s editorial judgments about how to curate and display ... billions of posts of third-party speech.”

Elsewhere, California narrowed rather than expanded one avenue for privacy enforcement. Newsom signed SB 690 on Sept. 30. Beginning Jan. 1, 2027, a private right of action under a specific provision of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, or CIPA, involving pen-register or trap-and-trace claims based on conduct on a website, online application or mobile application may be brought only by the California attorney general. CIPA is a longstanding state privacy and wiretapping law, and SB 690 does not erase it, but it does significantly limit private lawsuits in that web and app tracking category.

Other privacy proposals failed outright.

Newsom vetoed AB 1542 on Sept. 27. The bill would have banned the sale of sensitive personal information. AB 2564, which would have barred retailers from using personal data for “surveillance pricing,” died at the end of the session after failing to complete final legislative steps. AB 322, a location-data privacy bill, did not pass. SB 1013, which would have added oversight requirements for automated license plate reader systems, stalled in the final days and also failed to become law.

California’s role in tech policy gives those outcomes outsized importance. Because of the state’s size and its concentration of major technology companies, rules adopted in Sacramento can influence product design and compliance decisions far beyond California.

This year’s record showed both the reach and the limits of that influence. California enacted notable protections around workplace AI and moved ahead with youth online legislation, but it also pulled back or stalled on several privacy measures. The result was an uneven 2026 session for the state’s digital-rights agenda — ambitious in parts, restrained in others.