Predictive Scheduling Laws by State and City (2026)

Predictive scheduling laws, usually called fair workweek laws, require covered employers to publish work schedules in advance, pay a premium when they change them on short notice, give employees a minimum rest period between shifts, and offer extra hours to existing part-time staff before hiring. As of November 2026 one state, Oregon, and ten cities have them: San Francisco, Emeryville and Berkeley in the Bay Area, Los Angeles city and the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, Seattle, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Evanston. Eleven states have passed laws preventing their cities from adopting any. No new state or city law took effect in 2025 or 2026 apart from Los Angeles County's in July 2025, though Chicago rewrote its rules effective June 2026.

The laws share a design but differ in every number: who is covered, how many days of notice, how much the premium is, how many hours of rest. This guide sets each jurisdiction out in the same format so a multi-location employer can compare them, lists the preemption states, explains the common compliance failures, and describes what a schedule system needs to record. Most of these laws are enforced on documents, so the recordkeeping section matters as much as the rules.

Where predictive scheduling laws apply

The first ordinance was San Francisco's in 2015. Oregon became the only state with a statewide law in 2017, the same year Seattle, Emeryville and New York City acted. Philadelphia and Chicago followed in 2020, Los Angeles in 2023, Berkeley and Evanston in 2024 and Los Angeles County in 2025. The movement stalled in state legislatures: bills in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Virginia (whose 2026 bill died in subcommittee) did not pass, and the preemption laws of the 2016 to 2018 period, now in eleven states, blocked city action across the South and Midwest. The result is a map in which large retailers and restaurant chains comply in a dozen places and nowhere else, and in which an employer's obligations depend on the city a store is in rather than the state.

Every jurisdiction compared

Oregon

Oregon's law covers retail, hospitality and food service employers with 500 or more employees worldwide, averaged over 20 or more workweeks, and excludes salaried exempt workers and workers supplied by staffing agencies. Employers must give a written good-faith estimate at hire of the median monthly hours and whether on-call shifts are expected, and must post the written schedule, including on-call shifts, at least 14 calendar days before its first day. Employees may state limits on their availability and may not be retaliated against for doing so, though the employer need not grant the request. A voluntary standby list lets employees opt in to last-minute extra hours without triggering premiums.

Predictability pay is one additional hour at the regular rate when the employer adds more than 30 minutes to a shift, changes its date or time without reducing hours, or adds a shift or on-call shift; and one-half the regular rate for each scheduled hour not worked when hours are cut, a shift is canceled, or an on-call employee is not called in. Exceptions cover natural disasters, employee-initiated swaps and standby-list calls. The rest rule bars work in the first 10 hours after a shift ends unless the employee requests or consents, and hours worked inside that window are paid at time and a half. The Bureau of Labor and Industries enforces, with civil penalties and a private right of action; records must be kept three years.

San Francisco, Emeryville, Berkeley, Los Angeles

California has no statewide law, and repeated bills have died, so its rules are municipal.

• San Francisco applies to "formula retail" chains with 40 or more locations worldwide and 20 or more employees in the city, and to their janitorial and security contractors. Two weeks' notice; a tiered premium of 1 hour for changes with less than 7 days' notice, and 2 or 4 hours (by shift length) for changes or uncalled on-call shifts with less than 24 hours' notice; an offer of additional hours to part-time staff up to 35 hours a week before hiring; equal treatment of part-time employees in starting pay, access to paid and unpaid time off and promotion eligibility; and 90 days' job retention when a store changes hands. No rest-between-shifts rule.
• Emeryville covers retail firms with 56 or more employees globally and fast food firms with 56 globally and 20 locally, including franchisees in networks of more than 12 locations. Fourteen days' notice, an 11-hour rest rule with time and a half for hours inside it, a premium of up to 4 hours for cancellations or cuts with less than 24 hours' notice (with a 10-minute grace period), a good-faith estimate, an access-to-hours policy and a right to request a flexible arrangement.
• Berkeley, in effect since January 2024, reaches further than its neighbors: building services, health care, hotels, manufacturing, retail and warehouses with 56 or more employees globally and 10 or more in Berkeley, restaurants with 100 or more, franchisees in large networks, and nonprofits in those industries with 100 or more. Covered employees are non-exempt staff earning less than twice the Berkeley minimum wage. The premium is 1 hour for any change inside 14 days, rising to the lesser of 4 hours or hours lost for cancellations inside 24 hours. Rest is 11 hours at 1.5x for each hour short.
• Los Angeles (city since April 2023, county unincorporated areas since July 2025) covers retail employers with 300 or more employees globally, counting temporary, staffing and franchise workers, and employees who work two or more hours a week in the jurisdiction. Fourteen days' notice; one extra hour for any change adding or losing more than 15 minutes; half pay for hours lost; a 10-hour rest rule with written consent and time and a half; a good-faith estimate that must be revised if actual hours deviate materially (the county uses a 20 percent, 6-of-12-weeks test); 72 hours' written notice to current employees before hiring; written reasons for denying a schedule request; and three years of records. The city can fine up to $50 a day per violation.

Seattle

Seattle's Secure Scheduling Ordinance covers hourly employees at retail and food service establishments with 500 or more employees worldwide; full-service restaurants must also have 40 or more full-service locations. It requires a good-faith estimate at hire, annually and on any significant change; 14 days' notice; one hour of predictability pay for added hours or a changed time, and half pay for hours an employee is sent home early or an on-call shift that is not used; time and a half for any hours worked inside a 10-hour window after the previous shift; a posted offer of new hours to current qualified employees for three days before hiring; an interactive process for schedule requests, with requests tied to major life events (caregiving, a second job, education, health) to be granted absent a bona fide business reason; and a right to decline hours not on the posted schedule. The Office of Labor Standards enforces with back pay, penalties and fines, and publishes the only regular evaluation of a fair workweek law, which found compliance improved materially after enforcement began.

New York City

New York's law has two regimes. Fast food employees at chains with 30 or more establishments nationally (franchisees count toward the brand total) get the fullest protections in the country: a written regular schedule, 14 days' notice, a ban on "clopening" shifts less than 11 hours apart without written consent and a $100 premium when they occur, a duty to offer new shifts to current employees before hiring, and since 2021 a just-cause requirement for firing or cutting hours by more than 15 percent. Schedule-change premiums are flat dollar amounts rather than hours of pay:

Retail employers with 20 or more employees in the city face a lighter set of rules: schedules 72 hours in advance, no on-call shifts and no requirement to call in within 72 hours of a shift to learn whether to report, no cancellation or reduction of a shift with less than 72 hours' notice, and written consent for hours added inside 72 hours. There is no predictability pay and no rest-period premium for retail. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection enforces both, and its fast food settlements have run into the millions, including a $20 million agreement with Chipotle in 2022 covering about 13,000 workers.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia covers retail, hospitality and food service establishments with 250 or more employees and 30 or more locations worldwide, counting chains and franchises together. It requires a good-faith estimate, revised when actual hours deviate significantly (the rules use a 6-of-12-weeks test), 14 days' notice (10 days in its first year), one hour of pay for added time or a changed date, time or location, at least half pay for scheduled hours not worked when hours are cut or a shift or on-call shift is canceled, a 9-hour rest rule with a flat $40 for each shift worked inside it, written consent to added hours, an offer of new hours to existing employees before hiring, and two years of records. Predictability pay enforcement was suspended during the pandemic and began on June 1, 2021 after a 90-day notice.

Chicago and Evanston

Chicago's ordinance is the broadest by industry: building services, health care, hotels, manufacturing, restaurants, retail and warehouse services. Employers need 100 or more employees globally (250 for nonprofits; restaurants need 30 locations and 250 employees), and employees are covered only if they earn no more than a threshold that adjusts each July 1: $33.85 an hour or $64,945.55 a year from July 1, 2026, up from $32.60 and $62,561.90. The rules require 14 days' notice, one hour of predictability pay per employer-initiated change of more than 15 minutes, a 10-hour rest rule with written consent and 1.25 times the regular rate for the shift, a good-faith estimate for new hires, an offer of hours to existing covered employees before using temps or hiring, and a right to decline unscheduled hours. Amended rules effective June 1, 2026 require schedules to be time-stamped, define the regular rate for predictability pay to exclude overtime and premiums, require fresh written consent for each change, specify what the good-faith estimate must state, and relieve employers of the offer-of-hours duty when opening a new location in the city.

Evanston, Chicago's northern neighbor, adopted a near-copy in 2024 for hospitality, retail, warehouse, manufacturing and building services employers with 100 or more employees globally and restaurants with 30 locations and 200 employees. Its distinctive features are an 11-hour rest rule, a requirement that changes be communicated in writing within 24 hours, a premium of up to 4 hours for cancellations inside 24 hours, a written response to schedule requests within three days, and fines of $300 to $500 per offense.

States that ban local scheduling laws

Eleven states prohibit their cities and counties from regulating private employers' scheduling, usually in statutes passed in 2016 to 2018 in response to the first ordinances, and in Florida's case in 2024. None of these states has a scheduling law of its own, so employers there face no predictive scheduling obligations at any level.

Texas appears on some vendor lists but its preemption statute concerns minimum wage and benefits rather than scheduling specifically; treat it as a state with no scheduling law and no clear preemption rather than as a preemption state.

Complying across jurisdictions

An employer with stores in Seattle, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles is subject to four different notice rules, four premium schedules and four rest periods. The common approach is to adopt the strictest rule as the company standard where the cost is low (14 days' notice everywhere, 11 hours' rest everywhere, a written good-faith estimate for every hourly hire) and to configure the jurisdiction-specific premiums in the scheduling and payroll systems. The failures that produce enforcement actions are consistent across cities:

1. Unrecorded changes. A manager texts an employee to come in an hour early and nobody enters it; the premium is never paid and the schedule on file does not match the time clock. Chicago's 2026 rules require time-stamped schedules for exactly this reason. Every change needs a record of when it was made, who initiated it, and whether consent was given, see employee availability form for the request side.
2. Employee-initiated changes without proof. Swaps and requested changes are exempt from premiums everywhere, but only if the employer can show the employee asked. A written request, even a message in the scheduling app, is the evidence.
3. Clopenings at the store level. A closing manager and an opening manager scheduling the same employee without seeing each other's schedule. The scheduling system should block or flag any shift starting within the rest window.
4. Hiring before offering hours. Posting a job before posting the hours internally for the required period. Build the internal posting into the requisition process.
5. Stale good-faith estimates. Several laws require revision when actual hours diverge; Los Angeles County's 20 percent test and Philadelphia's 6-of-12-weeks test are mechanical enough to automate from time records.
6. Counting employees wrong. Thresholds count worldwide employees, often including franchise and staffing workers. A company with 90 direct employees and 40 temps is covered in Chicago.

Records are the other half. Oregon and Los Angeles require three years, Philadelphia two, and the wage records that prove premiums were paid fall under the retention rules in our record retention guide. Scheduling software built for these laws (the shift scheduling tools we review increasingly include fair workweek modules) logs the posting time, every change and every consent automatically; a spreadsheet does none of this. For the related state laws on how quickly schedule changes must translate into pay, see pay frequency laws by state, and for the breaks that must appear on the schedule, meal and rest break laws by state.

Key takeaways

• As of November 2026, one state (Oregon) and ten cities (San Francisco, Emeryville, Berkeley, Los Angeles city and county, Seattle, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Evanston) have predictive scheduling laws. Eleven states preempt local laws.
• Every full law requires 14 days' notice except New York City retail (72 hours); rest periods range from 9 hours (Philadelphia) to 11 (Emeryville, Berkeley, New York City fast food, Evanston).
• Predictability pay is usually one hour of pay for a late change and half pay for hours cut; New York City fast food uses flat amounts of $10 to $75 per change and $100 per clopening; Philadelphia pays $40 per short-rest shift.
• Thresholds differ widely: 500+ employees worldwide in Oregon and Seattle, 300+ in Los Angeles, 250+ and 30 locations in Philadelphia, 100+ in Chicago and Evanston, 56+ in Emeryville and Berkeley, 20+ in the city for New York retail.
• Chicago covers only employees earning up to $33.85 an hour or $64,945.55 a year from July 1, 2026, and its amended rules effective June 1, 2026 require time-stamped schedules and fresh consent for each change.
• No new state or city law took effect in 2025 or 2026 except Los Angeles County's (July 2025); Florida added a preemption statute in July 2024.
• Enforcement turns on records: time-stamped schedules, documented employee-initiated changes, written consents, internal hours postings before hiring, and revised good-faith estimates.