Blog: The California Workplace Advisor

Founders have finite bandwidth, and in the early days, employment law compliance rarely feels as urgent as fundraising, product development, and building out the team. But the choices you make as you scale from 0 to 25 employees can have outsized consequences later—particularly when it comes to hiring, pay practices and leave obligations, and basic…

Effective January 1, 2026, California’s Assembly Bill 692 will continue the state’s longstanding trend of broadening worker mobility protections by prohibiting most forms of “repayment on separation” provisions in new employment agreements. The new law, AB 692, directly targets contractual provisions that require workers to repay training expenses, tuition, bonuses, or other employer-funded investments if…

California employers have long understood the state’s hostility toward contractual restraints on employee mobility. While non-competes are expressly prohibited, enforcement of related restrictions—such as no-poach and employee non-solicitation provisions—was historically uneven. Many disputes played out quietly in private litigation or arbitration, if they surfaced at all. That approach is changing. A recent settlement announced by…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has formally withdrawn its defense of the nationwide non-compete ban, a signature rule of the Biden-era agency. The ban, intended to curb restrictive employment contracts and enhance worker mobility, faced immediate legal challenges—most notably from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business coalitions—which questioned the FTC’s authority to impose…

As widely reported in the media, Congress approved a massive increase in funding for immigration enforcement in the One “Big Beautiful Bill.” It’s estimated that the new funding approximately triples the immigration enforcement budget. You can find details at the website of the American Immigration Council, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/big-beautiful-bill-immigration-border-security/. This increases funding for worksite enforcement, among other…