Bill
A 3855
Requires annual independent bias audits of automated employment decision tools, detailing disparities by protected groups and guiding mitigations for NJ employers and vendors.
Note: the document text provided for A-3855 concerns automated employment decision tools (AEDTs) and bias audits. The bill header in your prompt (referring to a constitutional amendment on new towns) appears to be a mismatch; the summary below follows the bill language about AEDTs.
Status & Key Dates
- Introduced: February 22, 2024
- Reported as Assembly Committee Substitute: May 16, 2024
- Referred to Local Governments: January 30, 2025
- Sent to Attorney General for opinion: January 31, 2025
- Opinion referred to Judiciary: February 7, 2025 (current status: OPINION REFERRED TO JUDICIARY)
- Sponsors: Jaime R. Williams (primary), Michael Novakhov, Karl Brabenec, David McDonough
- Related legislation: S-2964 (companion); A-9417 (prior session)
Purpose / Intent
- To regulate employer use of machine-based hiring and employment decision systems (AEDTs) by requiring regular, independent bias audits and by setting minimum standards for those audits. The aim is to identify, document, and mitigate discriminatory outcomes arising from AEDTs used in recruitment, promotion, compensation, performance review, or other employment decisions.
Definitions & Scope (selected)
- AEDT: a machine-based system that, for human-defined objectives, makes predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing recruitment, workforce, or employment decisions (includes machine learning, statistical models, etc.).
- Bias audit: an impartial evaluation by an independent auditor that assesses an AEDT’s impact on covered categories, documents biases/risks, and provides actionable mitigation recommendations.
- Covered categories: race, color, national origin, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, marital/familial status, disability, and deriving income from public assistance.
- Independent auditor: must be capable of objective judgment and must not have developed, used, employed by, or hold (direct or material indirect) financial interest in the AEDT vendor or employer being audited.
Major Provisions
- Annual audit requirement: An employer or employment agency may not use or continue to use an AEDT if more than one year has passed since its most recent independent bias audit.
- Minimum audit content:
- Calculate selection rates (or scoring rates for continuous outcomes) and impact ratios for each protected category.
- Perform disaggregated analyses by sex, race/ethnicity, age, marital/familial status, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, income source, and intersectional subgroups (e.g., race × sex).
- When AEDTs classify individuals into groups, perform the metrics for each group and report counts excluded due to unknown category.
- For scoring systems, calculate sample median and scoring rates above median by category.
- Training & test data: Bias audits must use the AEDT’s training data except in specified circumstances; the bill also sets conditions for when an employer may use another employer’s training data for audit purposes (text truncated in provided materials).
- Audit deliverables: identification and documentation of biases/risks, and clear, actionable recommendations to avoid, manage, or mitigate identified harms and ensure safe, secure, trustworthy AEDT use.
Who Is Affected
- All New Jersey employers and employment agencies using AEDTs — includes private employers and public entities (State, counties, municipalities, school districts, and other instrumentalities).
- AEDT vendors and developers (through auditor independence rules and audit findings).
- Candidates and employees assessed by AEDTs — the bill’s protections and reporting center on the enumerated protected categories.
Procedural/Implementation Notes
- The substitute expands and clarifies definitions and audit metrics from the introduced version (for example, broader category listing and more detailed impact-ratio definitions).
- The bill requires independent auditors without conflicts; it also imposes a recurring (annual) compliance cadence that could require employers to arrange audits and remediation processes regularly.
- The provided text does not specify enforcement mechanisms, penalties, or agency oversight details in the excerpt available.
Potential Practical Impacts
- Increased compliance costs for employers using AEDTs (annual audits, potential model changes, recordkeeping).
- Greater transparency and empirical checks on automated hiring decisions in NJ, with potential to reduce disparate impacts on protected groups.
- Possible legal and procurement implications for AEDT vendors (auditor independence, access to training data, contractual terms).
If you want, I can produce:
- A one-page factsheet for employers explaining required steps to comply; or
- A comparison table showing differences between the introduced version and the committee substitute.
Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.
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