California has added new anti-hate speech training requirements alongside the state’s existing sexual harassment prevention training obligations, with the new rules taking effect in January 2028. In this alert, we take a quick look at who the requirements will apply to, the content you must include, and what to do next.
Summary
California Governor Gavin Newsom has approved a new assembly bill (AB-1803) that adds anti-hate speech training as an additional requirement within the state’s sexual harassment training and education law.
The existing law applies to all employers in California with five or more employees. Every two years, these employers must deliver at least two hours of “classroom or other effective interactive training and education regarding sexual harassment” to all supervisors. Within the same period, they must additionally deliver at least one hour on the same topic to non-supervisors. These requirements are unchanged by the new bill, which simply states that the training hours must now include an anti-hate speech training component.
The amended text outlines that “Anti-hate speech training shall provide supervisors and employees with practical guidance on recognizing, reporting, and confronting workplace speech that vilifies, humiliates, or incites hatred against people based on the protected characteristics listed in subdivision (a) of Section 12940.” It additionally states that any training “that includes information about the prohibition against unlawful harassment and prevention of abusive conduct that is based on an individual’s protected characteristics” satisfies the training requirement.
The new requirement comes into force on January 1, 2028.
Who Is Impacted and What Actions Are Required?
Employers in California must now review their existing anti-harassment programs and work with their training partners to determine whether current material adequately addresses prohibited harassment, abusive conduct, and hateful speech on the basis of protected characteristics. If the material is found to be inadequate, organizations should coordinate with internal training personnel and external vendors to implement new versions of the training before the January 1, 2028 deadline.
Organizations should also take care to ensure that company policies do not contradict the training: employees must be confident that their concerns about potentially hateful or abusive speech will be appropriately investigated and addressed if reported.
How Affirmity Can Help
We offer a Preventing Workplace Harassment eLearning course as part of our wider workforce compliance training offering. Organizations can acquire this training in a variety of different editions that fulfil the requirements of different state laws, including California. The “Advanced” and “Extended” editions available are appropriate for supervisors and non-supervisors, respectively.
Make sense of the evolving patchwork of state laws: contact our team of experts today and sign up here to receive critical compliance alerts.
About the Author
Coral Glass assists clients in creating and maintaining compliant and realistic Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity plans as well as VETS and EEO-1 reports. She also facilitates our Best Practices for Non-Discrimination and Compliance workshop. Coral has been with Affirmity for more than five years and has experience in human resource consulting, benefits, and reporting.