By Elizabeth Gresosky
Companies with five or more employees will be subject to California’s recently passed “anti-hate” training law if just one of those employees – or even a contractor – lives in California.
The California Family Council (CFC) reported that AB 1803, recently signed into law by Governor Newsom and set to take effect on January 1, 2028, wraps hate speech training into Government Code section 12950.1.
According to the CFC, the “anti-hate” training already used by the Civil Rights Department in California “tells trainees that using the wrong pronoun for a transgender identified person on purpose is harassment, as well as objecting to a coworker’s use of a restroom that does not match their sex.” But this AB 1803 adds even more hate speech training into employer requirements every two years.
A major problem with the bill: “hate speech” isn’t actually defined.
CFC reports:
The law “orders training on how to recognize, report, and confront workplace speech that “vilifies, humiliates, or incites hatred” against people based on protected characteristics, a list that includes sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.”
“None of those three verbs has a settled legal meaning. The free speech group FIRE warned that this language fails to separate protected expression from unlawful conduct. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Matal v. Tam (2017) that the First Amendment has no hate speech exception. So who decides when a coworker feels humiliated by the statement that God made us male and female?”
California’s track record, of course, includes associating Christian language and values with “hate” and/or “anti-LGBT” positions.
And while the statute does not specifically mention churches or religious non-profits, “no court, Attorney General opinion, or Civil Rights Department guidance has settled whether the religious employer exemption in the Fair Employment and Housing Act reaches this training mandate.”
CFC is advising Christians across the nation that may be impacted by this law to request religious exemptions or accommodations to “hate speech” training like this and encourages employers to consult with attorneys about whether the religious employer exemption covers their business.
