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Checkout Checkmate: Long Beach Enacts Self-Checkout Ordinance
Long Beach, California is often an incubator for novel employment laws. For example, in the hospitality industry, Long Beach was one of the “early adopters” of ordinances regulating workplace standards for hotel workers, including providing workers with panic buttons, mandating that laid-off workers be recalled in the order of seniority (“right of recall”), and implementing restrictions on the workloads of housekeepers. Other California cities followed suit, and even the state of California eventually adopted its own right of recall law. As another example, in the grocery industry during the COVID-19 pandemic, Long Beach adopted a “hazard pay” ordinance for grocery store workers.
This trend of local regulation of working conditions has been developing for the past decade or so—which we have termed the “municipalization” of employment law. Cities are legislating matters that traditionally might have been the province of labor union bargaining: supplemental pay, seniority, and workload. Long Beach now has further advanced the trend—regulating workloads in the grocery industry with a self-checkout staffing ordinance. This first-of-its-kind ordinance could become a model for urban retail policy in the post-pandemic economy. What started in Long Beach may soon become a statewide—or even national—shift in how cities regulate retail automation.
Applicability
This ordinance1 apples to:
- “Drug Retail Establishments,” which are defined as stores selling prescription/non-prescription medicines and other miscellaneous items; and
- “Food Retail Establishments,” which include both: (i) a retail store that is over 15,000 sq. ft. and which primarily sells household foodstuffs; or (ii) a retail store that is over 85,000 sq. ft. with at least 10% of the sales floor dedicated to non-taxable food merchandise.
Staffing Requirements
If a business in Long Beach is covered under the ordinance, it must comply with new minimum staffing requirements. A business must now have at least one staffed traditional checkout lane, which must be available whenever self-checkout is in use. A business must also have at least one employee supervising every three self-checkout stations (1:3 ratio). An “employee” does not include managers, supervisors, or confidential employees (i.e., employees who have access to sensitive management or labor relations information). In addition, employees assigned to supervise self-checkout stations must not have other duties that interfere with monitoring those areas during the time they are assigned to supervise those stations.
Operational Restrictions
The ordinance also places limitations on self-checkout purchases. A customer may only have 15 or fewer items, may not have items requiring ID verification (e.g., alcohol, tobacco), and may not have items with theft-deterrent tags or items stored in locked cabinets. Stores will be required to post signage informing customers of the ordinance with a QR code or link to the city’s website with ordinance details.
Enforcement: Private Right of Action
Many similar ordinances rely on administrative enforcement with a local agency tasked with making sure that regulations are followed. The new Long Beach ordinance, however, establishes an explicit private right of action. Employees and customers may file a lawsuit in Superior Court for violations of this ordinance.
Penalties: Retail Rules with Real Consequences
Employees and customers who establish a violation may be entitled to an award of civil penalties. These start at $100 per employee per day. The penalty increases by $100 per employee per day for each day the violation is not cured ($200 per employee per day for the second day, and so on), up to a maximum of $1,000 per employee per day. Depending on the number of employees involved, and the length of the violation, these are potentially staggering penalties.
Time to Prepare: Now
The new ordinance takes effect September 22, 2025, which is 31 days after the ordinance was approved by the mayor on August 21, 2025. Long Beach may not be alone, however. Keep your eye on a pending bill in the California Legislature, Senate Bill 442, introduced by Senator Smallwood-Cuevas. That bill would impose similar compliance obligations on grocery and drug store employers statewide.
