Your New Rights When AI Screens Your Job Application
By S.R. Prater ·
Your application has a new first reader
Before a recruiter reads your application, software may already have scored it.
AI tools now sort, grade, and rank applications at scale. Workday's Recruiting Agent grades candidates against job requirements. LinkedIn's Hiring Assistant builds a candidate pipeline from a job description and can bring back people who applied before.
You also have new legal rights when AI weighs your application. Some are in force today. Others start January 1, 2027. Below is what each one gives you, where it applies, and a source you can check yourself.
Illinois: you must be told (in force since January 1, 2026)
Illinois amended its Human Rights Act to cover AI at work. Since January 1, 2026, employers must notify applicants and employees when AI is used in hiring and other employment decisions.
The law also bars AI use that discriminates against protected classes. It bars using zip codes as a stand-in for those classes.
One caveat. In June 2026, the state agency withdrew its proposed rules on how notice must be given. The duty to notify still stands. The exact form of the notice is still unsettled.
Sources: Seyfarth Shaw
New York City: an audit you can look up (enforced since July 5, 2023)
New York City's Local Law 144 covers employers that use an automated tool to screen candidates. The tool must have a bias audit within the past year. The employer must post a summary of the results. And it must notify candidates.
The notice must come at least 10 business days before the tool is used.
Here is what you can do with it. Before you apply, check the employer's website for its bias audit summary. If an employer used a tool without the audit, the summary, or the notice, you can file a complaint online. You do not need an account.
The honest part: a December 2025 review by the New York State Comptroller found serious gaps in how the city enforces the law. A right that goes unused stays weak.
Sources: NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection · NY State Comptroller
California: two sets of rules
Civil rights rules, in force since October 1, 2025.
California made clear that an automated decision system can violate state anti-discrimination law when it harms applicants based on protected characteristics. Employers must keep employment records, including automated-decision data, for at least four years.
If you believe you faced discrimination, the Civil Rights Department runs a complaint process.
Privacy rules, compliance starting January 1, 2027.
Businesses covered by California's consumer privacy law that use automated decision-making technology for significant decisions, including hiring, must comply by January 1, 2027.
Before using the technology, they must tell you its purpose, how it works, your right to opt out, and how to access the data it used. Read each notice closely.
Sources: California Civil Rights Department · CDF Labor Law
Colorado: notice, explanation, and human review (starting January 1, 2027)
Colorado's governor signed Senate Bill 26-189 in May 2026. Its main provisions take effect January 1, 2027.
It protects job applicants who live in Colorado. It also covers anyone whose opportunity in Colorado is evaluated by a business operating there.
Here is what it gives you:
- Notice first. Before an employer uses automated technology to materially influence a hiring decision, it must tell you.
- Human review after a rejection. If the technology helped produce an adverse outcome, you can request meaningful human review and reconsideration.
- Your data, corrected. You can request and correct inaccurate personal data the technology used.
- An explanation. Under the attorney general's proposed rules, employers would owe detailed disclosures within 30 days of an adverse outcome.
A human glance is not a loophole. The law still applies when a person reviews every AI output before the final decision. Only the attorney general enforces it. You cannot sue under this law directly, though your other legal rights remain.
You can weigh in this week. The attorney general invites written comments from all members of the public through October 26, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Mountain time. The public hearing is October 26 at 10:00 a.m., in Denver and online.
Sources: Colorado General Assembly · Colorado Attorney General · Seyfarth Shaw · Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner
Who answers for the decision: Mobley v. Workday
Derek Mobley applied for job after job through employers using Workday's platform and was rejected. He alleges Workday's screening tools discriminated by race, age, and disability.
The court accepted that Workday could plausibly act as its customers' agent. The reasoning: employers may have delegated the work of rejecting and advancing candidates to Workday's software.
In June 2026, a federal judge kept key state discrimination and federal disability claims alive. Workday denies wrongdoing. It says its products are built to work with human oversight. There is no final ruling yet.
The case asks a plain question. When software helps reject you, who is responsible? Every law above gives the same answer. Someone is.
What you can do now
- Read the notice. When an application mentions automated tools or AI, slow down and read it. It tells you what is being evaluated and how.
- Look up the audit. For a New York City job, find the employer's bias audit summary on its website before you apply.
- Keep your own file. Save the posting, the date, what you submitted, and any rejection with its timestamp. California employers must keep their records for four years. Keep yours too.
- Ask for review. After January 1, 2027, a Colorado rejection shaped by AI lets you request human review and correct your data.
- Use your opt-out. From January 1, 2027, larger California employers must tell you how to opt out where the rules allow it.
- Speak up by October 26. If AI screening has affected you, the Colorado attorney general is taking public comments now.
- Report what's wrong. File a complaint with NYC's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection or the California Civil Rights Department when the rules were not followed.
Rights work best when you understand the system
A right to an explanation helps after the decision. Knowing how the system reads you helps before it.
The software scores what it can find. It ranks what it can parse. It skips what it cannot read. And it does not read only your résumé. Your LinkedIn profile, your résumé, and your search results all send signals. When those signals contradict each other, the system fills the gaps on its own.
You're not invisible. You're being misread.
That's why I wrote How Hiring Systems Read You. It walks you through how these systems read you, in four steps:
- Audit the signals AI and applicant tracking systems see today, and find the contradictions costing you interviews.
- Reset the one paragraph that powers your résumé summary, LinkedIn About section, and recruiter intro.
- Align your LinkedIn, résumé, portfolio, and search results into one story the systems can parse.
- Test with the included visibility checks, so you know before you apply that you read clearly.
It's built to be finished in a weekend.
This article is general information, not legal advice. These laws and their rules are still changing. Check the linked sources for your state, and talk to an employment attorney about your own situation.