On October 8, 2025, Governor Newsom signed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act (SB 642) into law. Effective January 1, 2026, the new law strengthens California’s Equal Pay Act by broadening wage transparency requirements and extending the timeframe for employees to bring claims.

Under SB 642, employers are now required to provide a good faith estimate of expected pay in job postings. Pay ranges may only vary 10% above and below the mean pay for any given position. The law extends the time that employees may file a claim from two to three years. It adopts the continuing violations doctrine, allowing workers to seek back pay for up to six years.

Additionally, the law clarifies that the requirement of equal “wages” covers not just monetary pay, but also equity grants like stock and stock options. The law modernizes existing protections by removing binary gender language, protecting all employees regardless of gender identity.

SB 642 is an important step toward addressing the racial and gender wage gap. American women lose $1.7 trillion annually because of the wage gap. Black women earn just 64 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. Mariko Yoshihara, Policy Director for the California Employment Lawyers Association, explained that, “one of the biggest barriers to advancing pay equity is that workers often don’t know that they are being paid unfairly until it is too late.”
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Lauren Teukolsky has represented workers for over two decades and her commentary on the latest developments in employment law is regularly featured by major publications such as Bloomberg Law, Law360, Law.com, and the Los Angeles Times. If you would like to speak with her about an employment matter, click here.

Last month, the California State Assembly and Senate churned through hundreds of bills in order to meet the “house of origin deadline” – the deadline by which all bills must have passed through their chamber of origin just to have a chance of being signed into law later this year. The bills that passed vary greatly, from bills focused on gun control to bills aimed at enhancing abortion protections. Teukolsky Law would like to take a moment to highlight some of the passed bills that will significantly benefit California’s workers, should they be signed into law later this year.

Senate Bill 1162
SB 1162, the Pay Transparency for Pay Equity Act, aims to improve workplace pay transparency and close the gender and race wage gap by requiring employers with 100 or more employees to publicly report their pay data broken down by race, ethnicity, and sex for both direct employees and employees hired through a third-party staffing agency. The bill would also require employers to provide a salary range on all job postings and promotional opportunities available to all current employees. SB 1162 passed the Senate on a 29-9 vote.

Assembly Bill 1949
AB 1949 would amend the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) to require employers to grant their employees at least 5 days of unpaid bereavement leave, or time off for the death or funeral of a family member. AB 1949 passed the Assembly on a 59-9 bipartisan vote.

Senate Bill 836
SB 836 would reinstate a provision that protects a person’s immigration status from disclosure in public court proceedings. This protection ended at the beginning of 2022 and stopped employers from using a worker’s immigration status to deter the worker from bringing legal claims against the employer. SB 836 passed the Senate on a 28-0 vote.
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All three of the above bills are sponsored by the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA) a statewide organization that works to protect and expand the legal rights of workers through  litigation, education, and advocacy. For a complete list of all bills being tracked by CELA, click here.