California employers can keep requiring workers to sit through meetings about the boss's views on politics, religion and union organising — for now. On Thursday, October 29, 2026, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court's preliminary injunction blocking Senate Bill 399, the state's so-called captive-audience law, holding in California Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta that the measure likely violates employers' First Amendment free-speech rights.
Source: Bloomberg Law
SB 399, enacted in 2024, made it unlawful for an employer to discharge, discipline or threaten an employee for declining to attend an employer-sponsored meeting — or to receive communications — whose purpose is to convey the employer's opinion about religious or political matters. An employee who is working at the time and elects to skip such a meeting must still be paid while it is held. Business groups, led by the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Restaurant Association and the Western Growers Association, sued state officials before the law took effect, arguing it violated the First Amendment and was preempted by the federal National Labor Relations Act. A district court blocked enforcement, California appealed — and has now lost that appeal.
Why the court said this is speech, not just conduct
California's central argument was that SB 399 regulates conduct — punishing a worker — rather than speech. Writing for the panel, Judge Richard Tallman, joined by Judges Richard Paez and Mark Bennett, rejected that framing. As the opinion puts it, quoted by Reason's Volokh Conspiracy: the law 'only applies to employers who engage in expressive activity at those meetings: namely, communicating their opinion. It does not, for example, prohibit taking adverse action against employees who decline to attend a meeting, the sole purpose of which was for employees to fill out their annual tax paperwork. It prohibits adverse action only when the meeting's purpose was for the employer to engage in expressive activity. Thus, the First Amendment applies.'
Source: Reason / The Volokh Conspiracy (quoting the opinion)
Because the law is triggered only by certain topics — politics and religion — and only by one speaker, the employer, the panel held it is both content-based and speaker-based. Laws of that kind face strict scrutiny, the most demanding test in U.S. constitutional law, and the panel found SB 399 likely cannot survive it.
The 'captive audience' argument — and why it failed
California defended the law as protection for a captive audience: employees who cannot simply walk away from a boss's sermon without risking their jobs. The panel answered that courts have used the captive-audience idea to uphold content-neutral rules — time, place and manner limits — or restrictions on government property such as public buses, but that California could not identify a single case upholding a content-based restriction on private speech in a private workplace on that theory. The state, the court said, remains free to protect unwilling listeners with rules that apply to all speech regardless of content; what it may not do is single out political and religious speech. The panel noted its conclusion matches the Eleventh Circuit's 2024 decision in Honeyfund.com, Inc. v. Governor, striking down a similar Florida law.
This is a preliminary-injunction ruling: the panel held that the business groups are LIKELY to succeed, so the law stays blocked while the case is litigated. It is not a final judgment striking SB 399 down, and the court expressly did not reach the groups' second argument — that the National Labor Relations Act preempts the law anyway.
A second ruling the same day
In a separate opinion, the same three-judge panel also revived a parallel challenge to SB 399 brought by the California Policy Center, finding that the lower court had erred in ruling that the policy center lacked standing to sue. That case now returns to the district court alongside the Chamber's.
What it means for California workplaces
For the large Punjabi and South Asian workforce in California — in trucking, warehouses, agriculture, restaurants and small businesses across the Central Valley and beyond — the practical effect is immediate and unchanged: SB 399 remains unenforceable, so an employer may still require attendance at meetings presenting its views, including views about union organising, without violating this state law. The fight is ultimately about where two rights meet: an employer's right to speak to its own workers, and a worker's claim not to be forced to listen on pain of losing a livelihood. The Ninth Circuit's answer, at this stage, is that a state may protect workers with neutral rules — but may not pick which opinions trigger the protection.
What happens next
The underlying case continues in the district court, which will decide the merits with the panel's reasoning now on the record; California can also seek rehearing before a larger en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit or, ultimately, ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Until a court says otherwise, the injunction stands and SB 399 cannot be enforced anywhere in California.