SB 93 Right to Recall: Covered Employers, Penalties, and Duration

California’s SB 93 right to recall law requires hotels, event centers, airport hospitality and service businesses, and building services employers to offer job openings to workers they laid off for COVID-related reasons before hiring anyone new, with offers made in writing and ties broken by seniority. The rules live in Labor Code Section 2810.8, are enforced by the state Labor Commissioner, and now run through the end of 2026 after two legislative extensions.

Which Employers Are Covered

SB 93 applies to a defined slice of the service economy, not to California employers generally. There is no minimum employee count. If a business fits one of the categories below, it is covered:

Hotels and private clubs with 50 or more guest rooms.
Event centers larger than 50,000 square feet or with more than 1,000 seats, used for public performances, sporting events, or business meetings. Connected food service, parking, and retail operations are also covered.
Airport hospitality providers offering food, beverages, or consumer goods and services to passengers and crews, including rental car companies. FAA-certificated air carriers are excluded.
Airport service providers under contract for ground-handling, cleaning, security, ticketing, or baggage functions. Certificated air carriers are again excluded.
Building services employers providing janitorial, building maintenance, or security services to office, retail, or other commercial buildings.

A change in ownership does not extinguish the obligation. A successor employer that keeps substantially the same operations or assets inherits the recall duties owed to the predecessor’s workforce.¹

SB 93 sets a statewide floor, not a ceiling. Local ordinances in cities such as Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Pasadena, Glendale, and Santa Monica that grant workers greater rights or additional enforcement tools remain in effect alongside the state law.²

Which Workers Qualify for Recall

A laid-off worker has recall rights under SB 93 only if all three of these are true:

They worked for the covered employer for at least six months during the 12 months before January 1, 2020.
They worked at least two hours per week for that employer.
They were separated on or after January 1, 2020, for a non-disciplinary reason tied to COVID-19, whether a public health directive, a government shutdown order, a reduction in force, or a general lack of business.

A worker is “qualified” for a new opening if they held the same or a similar role at the time of their most recent layoff.¹

What Employers Have to Do When a Position Opens

When a covered employer establishes a position for which a laid-off employee is qualified, it must extend a written offer within five business days. The offer has to go by in-person delivery or U.S. mail to the worker’s last known address, and also by email and text message if the employer has that contact information. The worker then has five business days from receipt to accept or decline, and Saturdays, Sundays, and California state holidays do not count against that window.¹

If more than one qualified laid-off worker accepts the same offer, the employer must award the position to the person with the greatest length of service, measured from original date of hire. Time on leave or vacation counts toward seniority.

An employer that decides not to recall a laid-off worker because it believes the worker is not qualified must send a written explanation within 30 days. That notice has to name everyone hired for the position, list each hire’s length of service, and state the employer’s reasons for passing over the laid-off worker.³

Records for each laid-off employee must be kept for at least three years from the date of the layoff notice. That means the employee’s full name, job classification, date of hire, last known address, email, phone number, a copy of the layoff notice, and every communication about recall offers.¹

Unionized workplaces are covered too. A collective bargaining agreement can waive SB 93’s provisions, but only if the waiver is “explicitly set forth in clear and unambiguous terms.”⁴

Penalties for Ignoring the Recall Rules

Violations get expensive quickly. A covered employer that violates recall rights faces a civil penalty of $100 per affected worker plus liquidated damages of $500 per worker per day until the violation is corrected. The Labor Commissioner can also order hiring and reinstatement, back pay, front pay, the value of lost benefits, and interest on unpaid amounts.

Retaliation against a worker for asserting recall rights carries heavier consequences: the greater of the standard SB 93 damages or back pay, front pay, and benefits, plus a $10,000 statutory penalty under Labor Code Section 98.6(b)(3).¹

There is no private right of action under SB 93 itself. Workers cannot file their own lawsuits to enforce the state law; complaints go to the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, and the Bureau of Field Enforcement investigates. Some local ordinances, including several in the Los Angeles area, do allow individual workers to sue.⁵

How Enforcement Has Played Out

Two Southern California hotel cases show what the penalty structure looks like in practice.

The first case involved Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, which closed in March 2020 and reopened that June. The Labor Commissioner’s Office issued roughly $3.3 million in citations on March 2, 2022, alleging the resort failed to prioritize rehiring laid-off employees. Terranea denied the allegations and called the law’s language “vague and poorly defined,” but settled in May 2022 for $1.52 million distributed among 57 workers, with individual payouts averaging more than $26,000 based on how long each had waited to be rehired. The resort also agreed to offer jobs to three specific former employees and paid $5,700 in civil penalties to the state.⁶

A larger citation followed. On October 16, 2023, the Labor Commissioner’s Office issued a citation of $4,799,563.84 against the Hyatt Regency Long Beach for failing to recall workers, or to recall them on time, after the property reopened. The figure included liquidated damages, interest, and civil penalties, and was described as the largest of its kind in state history.⁷

How Long the Law Remains in Effect

SB 93 was signed on April 16, 2021 and took effect immediately, with an original sunset of December 31, 2024. SB 723 extended the recall rights in 2023. AB 858, chaptered as Chapter 280 of the Statutes of 2025 with an effective date of October 3, 2025, pushed the sunset to January 1, 2027.⁸ The extension kept the same covered industries and the same recall and reinstatement framework without adding new sectors or reworking the definitions.⁹ Recall rights under Labor Code Section 2810.8 remain available to eligible hospitality and building services workers through the end of 2026.

1
California Department of Industrial Relations. FAQs on Recall Rights
2
Littler Mendelson. California Adopts Statewide Right to Recall Law for Certain Industries
3
Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani. California’s Service Industry Rehiring Law
4
Crowell & Moring. New California Law Requires Re-hiring of Laid-Off Hospitality and Business Services Workers
5
Hunton Andrews Kurth. California’s COVID Right to Recall Law Unites Patchwork of Local Ordinances
6
California Department of Industrial Relations. Terranea Resort Right to Recall Settlement
7
UNITE HERE Local 11. Right to Return to Work
8
Fast Democracy. AB 858
9
K&L Gates. California Employment Law Update for 2026