What do employers need to know about California’s new anti-hate-speech training requirement?

What do employers need to know about California’s new anti-hate-speech training requirement?

California employers are already familiar with the state’s extensive harassment prevention training requirements under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).

Every other year, employers with five or more employees in California must provide at least two hours of sexual harassment prevention training to supervisory employees, and at least one hour to nonsupervisory employees. The required sexual harassment training must also address discrimination, retaliation, abusive conduct, and harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

Now, California has added something new.

Beginning January 1, 2028, the required training must also include an anti-hate-speech component. That component must provide practical guidance on recognizing, reporting, and confronting workplace speech that vilifies, humiliates, or incites hatred against people based on protected characteristics. But here’s an important wrinkle. Employers may already be satisfying the new requirement.

The amended law provides that the anti-hate-speech requirement is satisfied if the training covers the prohibition against unlawful harassment and the prevention of abusive conduct based on protected characteristics. It seems likely that many current training options do indeed cover these topics.

Even so, employers would be well-served to consider expressly addressing hate speech in their training. Doing so can give employees and supervisors clearer guidance on what to recognize, how to report it, and how to respond when it occurs, rather than relying on broader harassment and abusive conduct content to satisfy the requirement.

Employers take note. Now is a good time to review your California harassment prevention training. Determine whether your existing program already satisfies the new requirement and consider adding an anti-hate-speech component.

At Littler, we’re here to help you stay ahead of ever-evolving training requirements and provide training that meets the needs of your workforce.