US state regulation
California
Every state-level regulation PlainRegWatch tracks for California - across data privacy, AI, food chemical bans, right to repair and worker protection, with status, effective dates and official sources.
- Tracker score
- 100/100 Top 10%
- Regulations tracked
- 12 Top 10%
- Enacted into law
- 12
- Categories regulated
- 5/5
Follow California regulation updates: RSS feed for this state.
Dense archive shelf. 12 tracked rows put California in the densest third of the state corpus (#1 of 51 by volume).
The verdict
California is a dense, high-tracker archive: 12 tracked rows and 100/100, with 12 enacted across 5 of 5 policy areas, led by Employment & Worker Protection.
- 100/100
- tracker (ceiling tercile)
- 12
- tracked rows (dense tercile)
- 12
- enacted into law
- Employment & Worker Protection
- WORKER-LED lead area
Tracker score is a 0–100 portal-derived measure: weighted counts of records marked enacted across five covered categories, normalized to the top result, not enforcement strength, legal burden, or an official state rating.
State archive posture brief
California legislative archive posture
Entity-varying stamps from California's rows in the five-category PlainRegWatch archive, volume band, enactment share, tracker score, and corpus rank, not a clone nationwide scaffold.
- 12 Tracked rows in archive
- 12 Enacted into law 100% share
- 0 Pending bills tracked
- 100/100 Portal tracker score
- #1 Of 51 by volume
- #1 Of 51 by tracker score
- Illinois Nearest volume peer 9 rows
- 5 Of 5 policy areas Employment & Worker Protection
Enacted-volume neighbourhood
Enacted statute count among nearest archive-volume peers (snapshot 2026-07-16).
State context
California's archive volume vs the tracked state corpus
Dense archive shelf: California is above the peer average for tracked volume and above the peer average for tracker score. Highlighted point = this state.
PlainRegWatch methodology: tracker score is a normalized enacted-count index, not legal burden. Placement method.
California enactments by year
Enacted regulations tracked in PlainRegWatch since 2015 · peak 3 in 2023
Policy coverage
California enacted mix · WORKER-LED
Worker-protection-led shelf: each card is live from California's rows (enacted counts only), with links into the national category hubs.
California regulatory footprint index
A single 0-100 index combining California's standing on 3 of 3 tracked measures: enacted-law volume, portal tracker strictness, and tracked-category breadth. This describes how extensive California's tracked regulatory footprint is, not a judgment of good or bad governance. A missing measure would drop out and redistribute its weight rather than deflating the index.
100/100
Percentile-weighted across 3 of 3 measures
- Enacted volume
- A 12 tracked
100th percentile nationwide
- Tracker strictness
- A 100/100
100th percentile nationwide
- Category breadth
- A 5 categories
100th percentile nationwide
Benchmarked live against every state reporting each measure in the current portal tracker. Not a legal, compliance, or governance-quality score; PlainRegWatch's own weighting (enacted volume 40%, tracker strictness 35%, category breadth 25%).
🤖 AI Regulation
California AI Transparency Act
SB 942 Effective: 2026-08-02Watermarks and detection tools for AI-generated content.
Generative AI Training Data Transparency Act
AB 2013 Effective: 2026-01-01Requires publishing training data info for public-facing GenAI.
Transparency in Frontier AI Act
SB 53 Effective: 2025-09-01Frontier AI developers ($500M+ revenue) must publish safety reports.
💼 Employment & Worker Protection
California Minimum Wage
Labor Code 1182.12 Effective: 2025-01-01California minimum wage $16.50/hr (2025). Healthcare sector: $18-$23/hr phased. Fast food workers (26+ locations): $20/hr since April 2024.
California Non-Compete Ban
B&P Code 16600 Effective: 1872-01-01Oldest and most absolute non-compete ban since 1872.
California Paid Sick Leave + Paid Family Leave
AB 1522 / SB 3 Effective: 2024-01-01California employees accrue 5 paid sick days/year. State-run Paid Family Leave (PFL) provides 8 weeks at 70-90% wages for family/medical leave.
California Pay Transparency Act
SB 1162 Effective: 2023-01-01Pay scale in postings (15+ employees). Annual pay data reports (100+).
California Salary History Ban
AB 168 Effective: 2018-01-01California prohibits all employers from seeking salary history from applicants or using prior salary to set compensation.
San Francisco Retail Workers Bill of Rights
File No. 140378 Effective: 2015-07-03San Francisco requires 2-week advance scheduling and premium pay for late changes in retail. Preceded Oregon statewide law.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Read with California
Nearest archive-volume peers and tracker-score poles for California (ARCHIVE · CEILING · QUIET), replacing the old fixed Related strip.
ARCHIVE CEILING QUIET WORKER-LED
Illinois · DENSE
Illinois tracks 9 rows (fewer by 3 than California); tracker stamp MID vs CEILING.
Colorado · DENSE
Colorado tracks 8 rows (fewer by 4 than California); tracker stamp CEILING vs CEILING.
New York · DENSE
New York tracks 8 rows (fewer by 4 than California); tracker stamp MID vs CEILING.
Oregon · DENSE
Oregon tracks 8 rows (fewer by 4 than California); tracker stamp MID vs CEILING.
Employment & Worker Protection hub · WORKER-LED
California's lead category is Employment & Worker Protection (6 enacted) under the WORKER-LED archive stamp.
Regulations by category in California
Source: State regulatory filings (IAPP / MultiState aggregation) California state-rule registry · 2025 California: 12 tracked · 12 enacted · tracker 100/100 (ARCHIVE/CEILING). Status reflects the latest legislative tracker snapshot.
Counts and tracker score are California's rows in the curated five-category archive · as of July 2026.