Connecticut SB 5 (Public Act 26-15): The Employer Checklist

What passed, exactly

Substitute Senate Bill 5 was signed on May 27, 2026 as Public Act No. 26-15. Its official title is "An Act Concerning Online Safety" — there is no short-title clause in the enrolled text, so names like "CART Act" are law-firm nicknames, not statutory ones. The employment provisions are Sections 7 through 14 and Section 26.

The statutory term of art is "automated employment-related decision technology": any technology that processes personal data and uses computation to generate output — a prediction, recommendation, classification, ranking, or score — that is a substantial factor in making or materially influencing an employment-related decision (Sec. 7(1)). Hiring, promotion, discipline, discharge, renewal, training selection, and terms of employment are all covered; routine scheduling and productivity monitoring are expressly excluded (Sec. 7(5)).

October 1, 2026 — the liability phase

This is the date employers should be planning around right now. Three things change:

• Using an AI tool stops being a defense. The act amends CGS 46a-60(b)(1) and 46a-81c so that use of an automated employment-related decision technology "shall not be a defense" to a discrimination complaint under CFEPA (Secs. 13–14).
• Anti-bias testing becomes weighable evidence. The commission or court may consider "the quality, efficacy, recency and scope" of anti-bias testing, its results, and your response to them (Secs. 13–14). No audit is mandated — but documented testing is now the thing that helps you in front of CHRO.
• AI-related layoffs get disclosed. Any employer filing a federal WARN notice with the Connecticut Labor Department must disclose whether the layoffs relate to the employer's use of AI or another technological change (Sec. 26).

October 1, 2027 — the notice phase

The disclosure duties most summaries attribute to 2026 actually attach to technologies deployed on or after October 1, 2027. For those deployments:

• Pre-decision written notice — before the employment decision is made, the employee or applicant must receive a written notice with six statutory elements (Sec. 10) (listed below).
• Interaction disclosure — if the technology is intended to interact with candidates (a screening chatbot, an automated interviewer), it must be disclosed in plain language that they are interacting with the technology, unless that would be obvious to a reasonable person (Sec. 9).
• Developer pass-through — the vendor must give the employer everything needed to comply, and can contractually assume the employer's notice duties (Sec. 8).

Open question in the text: the duties attach to a deployer who "on or after October 1, 2027, deploys" the technology, and "deploy" means "to put into use." Whether continued use of a tool first deployed earlier counts is not answered in the statute. The conservative read: provide notice regardless.

The six notice elements

The Sec. 10 written notice must disclose:

1. That the employer has deployed an automated employment-related decision technology
2. The purpose of the technology and the nature of the employment-related decision
3. The trade name of the technology
4. The categories of personal data it will analyze or process, and how that data will be assessed in reaching a decision
5. The sources of that personal data
6. Contact information for the employer

No element requires disclosing a trade secret — but withholding information requires its own notice stating what is withheld and why (Sec. 11).

Who enforces what

The regime is split, and this is the detail attorneys will care about: violations of the notice and disclosure duties (Secs. 8–11) are unfair trade practices under CUTPA, enforced solely by the Attorney General — no private right of action, and for violations on or before December 31, 2027 the AG may offer a 60-day cure window (Sec. 12). Discrimination claims travel the normal CFEPA route through CHRO and the courts (Secs. 13–14).

The checklist

Now:

• Inventory every AI tool that touches an employment decision for Connecticut employees or applicants — including remote roles.
• Start documented anti-bias testing on those tools, and keep the results and your responses; that record is your CFEPA evidence from October 1, 2026.
• Ask each vendor whether they will contractually assume the Sec. 9–10 notice duties (the Sec. 8(c) option).

By October 1, 2026:

• Brief whoever files WARN notices on the new AI-disclosure requirement.
• Confirm your discrimination-claim posture assumes no AI-tool defense.

By October 1, 2027:

• Have the six-element written notice wired into the hiring flow for every covered tool.
• Add the plain-language interaction disclosure to any candidate-facing AI.
• Keep delivery records — a notice you cannot prove you sent is a notice you cannot rely on.