Your Rights Start Before Day One: California Hiring Law From the Applicant's Side

Employment protections do not begin on an employee’s first day of work. In California, it switches on much earlier - beginning with the job posting and continuing through the application, interview, background check, and conditional-offer stages.

Understanding these employment protections can be important particularly when an applicant believes an employer improperly denied or withdrew an otherwise clear employment opportunity.

Here is what the law requires, in the order it happens to you.

The posting

Two rules apply before you ever apply.

A California employer with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in the job posting. Since January 1, 2026, "pay scale" carries a tighter definition: a good faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay for that position upon hire. A range so wide it communicates nothing is not a good faith estimate. Any applicant may also ask for the pay scale on reasonable request, whatever the employer's size. Violations carry a Labor Commissioner complaint filed within one year, a civil action, and civil penalties from $100 to $10,000 per violation.

An employer also may not state that a driver's license is required unless it reasonably expects driving to be one of the job's functions and reasonably believes another form of transportation would not be comparable in travel time or cost. That rule took effect January 1, 2025, and it reaches a large number of postings that carry a license requirement out of habit.

The application

California law also limits the information an employer may request from an applicant before it makes a conditional offer of employment.

It cannot ask about your salary history.

It cannot ask about your conviction history at all. Under the Fair Chance Act, an employer with five or more employees may not inquire into or consider conviction history until after it has made you a conditional offer.

It cannot ask about an arrest that did not lead to a conviction, about your participation in a pretrial or posttrial diversion program, or about a conviction that has been judicially dismissed or sealed. That prohibition is not limited to the form. The employer may not seek the information from any source or use it in any hiring decision. The remedy is concrete: actual damages or $200, whichever is greater, plus costs and attorney's fees, and treble damages or $500 for an intentional violation.

It cannot ask about your prior cannabis use.

Medical and psychological inquiries are similarly limited before a conditional offer. An employer may generally ask whether you are able to perform the job's functions, but it may not require a medical or psychological examination or make prohibited disability-related inquiries at the pre-offer stage.

The interview

The line an employer has to walk in an interview is narrower than most applicants realize, and it runs around the characteristic, not the subject.

An employer may ask questions that are directly related to an applicant’s ability or availability to perform the job. For example, an employer may ask whether you can work Saturday nights but it may not ask about your religion or your childcare arrangements to reach the same information. It may ask whether you are available to travel in March but it may not ask whether you are pregnant or planning to be. Asking such questions are a means of obtaining information about protected characteristics and may raise concerns under California’s anti-discrimination laws.

Importantly, applicants are protected against unlawful employment discrimination even though an employment relationship has not yet begun. A claim does not depend on having been hired.

The trial shift

If an employer asks you to work a shift so it can evaluate you, that is work, and it has to be paid at no less than the minimum wage.

The label does not change the analysis. Calling the arrangement a “working interview,” an “audition,” a “tryout,” or “training period” does not necessarily make the work unpaid – they are all compensable when you performed job duties. Unpaid work, regardless of the label of the working arrangement, is a wage claim, and the wage statutes add interest, costs, and attorney's fees to the wages themselves.

Similarly, if you were hurt during that shift, you were an employee for workers' compensation purposes as well.

The conditional offer

A conditional offer is an important point in the California hiring process because certain inquiries that are restricted in the pre-offer stage may be permissible afterward, subject to statutory conditions.

After a conditional offer, an employer may require a medical or psychological examination, but only where the examination is job related, consistent with business necessity, and required of everyone entering that same job classification. A screening applied to you alone does not meet that standard.

After a conditional offer, the employer may also look at conviction history. What follows is a procedure, not a judgment call. The ability to consider that information does not give an employer unrestricted discretion to deny employment simply because the applicant has a conviction history.

The background check

Two separate bodies of law govern the background check, and they give you overlapping rights.

Before a consumer or investigative consumer report is obtained, you are entitled to a clear written disclosure identifying the reporting agency and the nature of the information being gathered. Under federal law, that disclosure has to stand alone as its own document rather than sit inside the application packet. Under California law, the employer must give you a check box by which you may request your own copy of the report, and the copy has to reach you within three business days of the employer receiving it. Check that box every time. It is the only reliable way to see what the employer saw.

If the employer intends to act against you because of the report, it must first send you a copy of the report and a written summary of your rights, and give you a genuine opportunity to respond before the decision is final.

California also places separate restrictions on employment-related credit reports. A California employer may not pull one for employment purposes unless the position falls within a narrow list which includes managerial positions, sworn peace officers, positions with regular access to bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, or dates of birth, named signatories on company accounts, and positions with regular access to $10,000 or more in cash. A credit check run on an ordinary hourly role is not permitted.

When the offer is pulled because of a conviction

The Fair Chance Act establishes a specific process an employer generally must follow before denying employment based on an applicant’s history.

Before denying you the position, the employer must make an individualized assessment of three things: the nature and gravity of the offense, the time that has passed since the offense and the completion of any sentence, and the nature of the job you applied for.

If it still intends to deny you, it must send written notice identifying the conviction it is relying on, attaching a copy of the conviction history report it used, and explaining your right to respond.

You then have at least five business days to respond. If you dispute the decision and tell the employer that the record is inaccurate and you are gathering evidence of that, you get five more days.

If the employer denies you after all of it, additional notice requirements apply, including information concerning available procedures to challenge the denial decision, and about your right to file a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department.

Employers in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County carry further obligations under the county's Fair Chance Ordinance, in effect since September 3, 2024, including content requirements in the job posting itself.

Skipping any of those steps is a violation on its own. You do not have to prove the employer would otherwise have hired you.

When the offer is withdrawn for some other reason

The withdrawal of a job offer is not, by itself, necessarily unlawful. The circumstances surrounding the withdrawal nevertheless matter.

If you moved for the job, California law gives you a strong claim. A person induced to relocate by knowingly false representations about the kind, character, or existence of the work, how long it will last, or what it pays may recover double damages. An applicant who left a settled position in another city and arrived to find the role gone, or materially different from what was described, should treat that statute as the starting point.

Similarly, work actually performed during onboarding or before the anticipated start date may still be compensable even if the employment ultimately does not proceed.

Probationary, temporary, and agency placements

None of those labels shrinks your rights.

A probationary employee, a temp, a worker placed by a staffing agency, and a person on a trial shift are all covered by the wage laws, the discrimination laws, and the retaliation laws. If you reported harassment during a 30-day introductory period, the report counts. The law does not make a distinction as to the applicability of rights in these certain cases.

When automated tools are used in hiring

Employers increasingly use technology to screen resumes, rank applicants, or evaluate recorded interviews. California amended its Fair Employment and Housing Act regulations to address exactly that, effective October 1, 2025.

An employer cannot evade responsibility when the use of an automated screening tool results in unlawful discrimination, including where the technology is developed, built, or operated by a third-party vendor. Employers must also retain automated-decision-system data for four years, which matters directly to applicants: the record of how you were scored is supposed to still exist, and you can use them to support your claim down the line.

As a result, being screened out by a system rather than an actual human being does not remove the employment decision from inquiry and scrutiny under California employment law.

What to keep

Applicants throw away the evidence. Save:

1. the job posting as it appeared, including the pay scale, with the date;

2. the application, every form in the onboarding packet, and anything you signed;

3. every background check disclosure and authorization, and the report itself if you requested a copy;

4. all written notices about a conviction, including the preliminary notice and the report attached to it;

5. every email, text, and offer letter describing the role, the pay, the schedule, and the start date;

6. any record of hours worked during a trial shift, training day, or onboarding; and

7. notes of what you were asked in the interview, written down the same day.

A screenshot of a posting that later changes is worth more than a memory of it.

When to seek legal guidance

Consider speaking with an employment lawyer if an offer was withdrawn after a background check, if you were asked about convictions before receiving an offer, if you were asked questions relating to religion, pregnancy, or childcare arrangements, if you relocated for a job that changed or disappeared, if you worked an unpaid trial shift, if you were asked about arrests, medical history, cannabis use, or salary history, or if an automated tool screened you out which resulted to unlawful discrimination.

If any of that describes your experience, Java & Jebreil can review what was asked, what was screened, and what was decided, and explain the options that may apply. The firm represents California employees in discrimination and harassment, wage and hour, and workplace retaliation matters, including claims that arise before the first day of work.

Sources

• California Government Code section 12952 – Fair Chance Act
• California Labor Code section 432.3 – pay scale and salary history
• California Labor Code section 432.7 – arrests, diversion, and dismissed convictions
• California Government Code section 12940 – unlawful practices, medical inquiries, driver’s license
• California Government Code section 12954 – cannabis and employment discrimination
• California Labor Code section 1024.5 – consumer credit reports
• California Civil Code section 1786.16 – investigative consumer report disclosures
• California Labor Code sections 970 and 972 – false representations inducing relocation
• Federal Trade Commission – Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know
• California Civil Rights Council – Fair Employment and Housing Act automated-decision-system regulations, effective October 1, 2025