Employment policy: voluntary veterans' preference.

Under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) , it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer, unless based upon a bona fide occupational qualification or applicable security regulations established by the United States or the State of California, to refuse to hire or employ a person or to refuse to select a person for a training program leading to employment, or to bar or discharge a person from employment or a training program leading to employment, or to discriminate against a person in compensation or in terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of the race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, or military and veteran status of that person. FEHA provides that nothing in that act relating to discrimination on account of sex affects the right of an employer to use veteran status as a factor in employee selection or to give special consideration to Vietnam-era veterans. This bill would enact the Voluntary Veterans' Preference Employment Policy Act to authorize a private employer to establish and maintain a written veterans' preference employment policy, to be applied uniformly to hiring decisions, to give a voluntary preference for hiring a veteran over another qualified applicant. The bill would require a private employer with a veterans' preference employment policy to annually report to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing the number of veterans hired under the preference policy and any demographic information about those veterans that the employer obtained in response to the department's reporting requirements. Under the bill, failure to submit that report would render any preference granted by the employer ineligible for the protections provided by this bill. The bill would require the department to report that information, in addition to the number of discrimination claims received based on an employer's veterans' preference employment policy, to specified legislative policy committees by July 1, 2025, and July 1, 2027. The bill would provide that the granting of a veterans' preference pursuant to the bill, in and of itself, shall be deemed not to violate any local or state equal employment opportunity law or regulation, including, but not limited to, the antidiscrimination provisions of FEHA. The bill would revise the existing veteran status provision in FEHA to remove references to discrimination on account of sex and to Vietnam-era veterans, and would, instead, provide that nothing in that act relating to discrimination affects the right of an employer to use veteran status as a factor in hiring decisions if the employer maintains a veterans' preference employment policy established in accordance with the Voluntary Veterans' Preference Employment Policy Act. The bill would prohibit a veterans' preference employment policy from being established or applied for the purpose of discriminating against an employment applicant on the basis of a protected classification, as specified. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2028.