Trapped in a chatbot loop with no way out? California now requires large businesses to provide one. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1609, the Right to Human Customer Service Act, on September 28, 2026, establishing new requirements for how qualifying businesses handle customer-service requests.
The measure applies to private businesses with more than $500 million in annual gross revenue that serve California consumers. Chatbots are not banned; the law requires covered companies to provide a visible, accessible way for customers to request a human agent during regular business hours.
What the Law Requires
The core obligation is a good-faith connection window, with a fallback appointment when that window cannot be met.
Once a customer requests human assistance, a business must make a good-faith effort to connect that person with an agent within 15 minutes, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee analysis. If it cannot meet that window, it must offer a scheduled callback or appointment within one business day.
Online support channels must display an estimated wait time and allow customers to choose their preferred contact method when options such as text, email, or phone are available. Businesses must also disclose when a customer is interacting with a chatbot and cannot represent an automated system as a human agent.
Phone support carries its own standards. After a customer reaches an agent, the law limits post-connection hold time to 15 minutes at a stretch, with a cumulative hold and escalation ceiling of one hour, per the Senate Judiciary Committee analysis.
How It Got Here and Who Pushed Back
The bill traveled from a five-minute proposal to a 15-minute standard, shaped by negotiations with industry representatives.
Zbur introduced the bill on January 20, 2026, motivated partly by his own experience waiting on hold at a pharmacy and a separate call to a credit-card company whose chatbot could not parse his request, according to SF Gate. His original draft set a five-minute connection window, which business lobbyists successfully challenged during negotiations, per SF Gate’s reporting.
Internet.Works, a technology lobbying group whose members include Automattic, Strava, and Etsy, raised concerns in a June bill analysis reported by SF Gate.
“These pressures push agents to prioritize speed over actually solving the customer’s problem.” Internet.Works, in a June bill analysis, as reported by SF Gate
Violations carry civil penalties of $5,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for each subsequent violation, according to SF Gate’s reporting on the bill’s enforcement provisions. Those figures have not been independently confirmed against the enacted statutory text.
The employment backdrop adds context. California’s Employment Development Department lists customer-service representatives among occupations most susceptible to AI-related disruption. A California Policy Lab analysis tracked unemployment-insurance claims and found job losses concentrated in high-AI-exposure occupations after ChatGPT-3.5 launched.
AB 1609 does not restore lost call-center jobs, and its good-faith standard is not a guarantee of an immediate human conversation in every case. The law establishes that access to a human agent is a legal obligation for qualifying companies, not simply a design choice those companies can quietly remove from their support systems.
