labor lawAdivision of labor law center

One of the hot topics that we’ve debated a bit on this blog is over the whole purpose of the new employee reporting system. As we saw from our discussion on all of the different ways that each state in the Union handles their systems, we learned that there was really one big overarching purpose to the system, which originally got its impetus on the federal stage.

What was that major impetus? Well, simply put, the major reason that the new employee hire reporting system is the way it is today is to be able to track down and punish parents who run from their debt to their children, in the form of child support payments. Delinquent parents can still try to hide in another state from their children, in an attempt to avoid having to pay those child support payments. But the new hire reporting system makes it much harder to hide—unless a worker has the complicit support of their employer, who agrees either not to report them, or to report fraudulent info.

California’s new law—AB 2440—which goes into effect in the new year—is meant to help close this last loophole. So California employers—not that you were conspiring against the new hire reporting system or anything—please be careful and understand that state of California has new-found rights to punish you for abetting these delinquent parents.

The new California law makes it so the state can actually impose a penalty on any employer who helps an employee or even one of their contractors in evading meeting their child support payments. Part of this includes a new penalty if employers purposely fail to report new hires.

What does this mean for most employers in California? It probably does not mean much to all employers who have up to this point already done a good job keeping up with the requirements of the state new hire reporting system, and a good job of keeping accurate and up to date personnel files.

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