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Senate panel advances bill limiting employers’ use of AI and electronic monitoring
Summary
A Senate State & Local Government Committee advanced Senate File 4689, which would bar employers from using automated decision systems and electronic monitoring to infer sensitive worker information or to take adverse actions. State revenue employees and policy groups urged safeguards; the committee approved the bill, 7‑5, and sent it to Judiciary.
A Minnesota Senate committee on Thursday voted to advance legislation intended to curb workplace surveillance and set limits on employers’ use of automated decision systems.
Senate File 4689, as amended, would prohibit employers from using electronic monitoring or automated decision systems (ADS) to derive or act on sensitive worker information — including health status, disability status, religion or political beliefs, emotional state, or predictions about personality or intent — and bar the use of facial‑recognition or emotion‑recognition technologies and implantable monitoring devices for employment actions.
Proponents said the bill seeks to protect workers from intrusive, discriminatory or illegal surveillance. “We are very heavily monitored,” Micah Monte, who identified himself as a state Department of Revenue employee, told the committee, describing the agency’s use of AI tools in call‑center quality review and urging “guardrails” so workers are not unfairly penalized by systems that analyze every call or keystroke. “Any further workers deserve to have guardrails in place,” he said.
Jake Schweitzer, executive director of Northstar Policy Action, summarized research showing rapid AI adoption in the workforce and argued Minnesota is behind other states in setting guardrails. “Employers should not be collecting data that is unrelated to the job,” Schweitzer said, urging transparency, access and appeal rights for workers and limiting ADS as sole decision‑makers in important employment outcomes such as hiring or firing.
Committee members raised concerns about how broadly the bill defines automated systems and the administrative burden for small employers. One senator cautioned that overly broad rules risk “one size fits all” standards that could hamper ordinary business software; the bill’s sponsor responded that the measure is aimed narrowly at preventing discriminatory or invasive practices, not banning all monitoring used for legitimate operational reasons.
The committee recorded a roll call and recommended the bill to pass and be referred to the Judiciary Committee by a 7‑5 vote. Staff recorded that the A3 amendment was adopted earlier in the hearing; the motion to recommend passage listed a recorded tally of seven ayes and five no votes.
The measure would apply to private employers and state entities that deploy ADS or electronic monitoring; the bill text as presented to the committee includes specific prohibitions on inference and use of certain categories of personal data and on monitoring in universally private spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms and nursing or pumping rooms.
The committee hearing also included discussion of possible follow‑on bills addressing workforce displacement and retraining related to broader automation trends, which sponsors said may require separate legislation.
The committee forwarded SF 4689 to the Judiciary Committee; no final action on the bill was taken at the hearing.
