Predictive Scheduling Laws by State: The 2026 Fair Workweek Cheat Sheet

This is the cheat sheet. Every active law in one place, what each one actually requires, what a violation costs you, and the legislation queued up for the next 18 months. Use it to audit your own operation — then route the specifics through your employment attorney before you change a single posted schedule.

The five protections every fair-workweek law contains

Twelve laws, written by twelve different city councils, all converge on the same five core protections. If you build your operation to handle these — even if you operate in a no-law state today — you are 90% of the way to compliance anywhere a new law passes.

The 2026 cheat sheet, jurisdiction by jurisdiction

Every card below follows the same structure, so you can compare cities side by side without re-learning the layout.

• Header — the jurisdiction and the year the law took effect.
• Who's covered — the industries and the employee-count threshold that pull you into the law. Read this first; if you're under the threshold, the rest doesn't apply.
• Notice — how far in advance the schedule must be posted.
• Predict. pay — what you owe an employee when you change a posted shift inside the notice window.
• Rest — the minimum hours required between two shifts (the "clopening" rule).
• Penalty — the civil fine per violation, before any private-action damages.

What a violation actually costs — in dollars

The per-violation numbers below look small until you realize they apply per employee, per shift, per change. A single mis-handled week across a 40-person retail store can stack into five figures of exposure before any private-action lawsuits.

What's on the horizon — bills to watch through 2027

Three additional states have fair-workweek bills moving through committee, and federal lawmakers continue to reintroduce the Schedules That Work Act. None are law yet, but multi-state operators should treat them as 12–18 month planning items, not blue-sky.

A 15-minute compliance checklist for operators

If you operate in any covered city, work through these five questions this week. They are the ones every fair-workweek investigator asks first — and the ones private-action plaintiffs use to build their case.

Common questions, answered fast

Does a "predictive scheduling" law apply to my business if I'm under the employee threshold?

In most jurisdictions, no — the laws set a clear floor (commonly 40, 56, 100, 250, or 500 employees, counted globally or in the city depending on the ordinance). But the employee count usually includes all locations worldwide, not just the one in the regulated city. Single-store operators are almost always exempt; multi-state chains almost never are.

What counts as a "schedule change" for predictability pay?

Almost any deviation from the posted schedule: adding a shift, canceling a shift, moving start/end time by more than 15 minutes, or sending someone home early. Voluntary swaps initiated by the employee usually do not trigger predictability pay, which is why giving staff a clean way to trade shifts with manager approval — like Teamsly's shift-swap workflow — keeps the paperwork simple. For the underlying math, see our breakdown of how no-shows actually cost you.

Do these laws apply to salaried managers and exempt employees?

No. Every fair-workweek law in the U.S. covers non-exempt hourly employees only. Salaried/exempt managers and executives are out of scope — though many of the laws still cover non-exempt assistant managers, leads, and shift supervisors, which is where compliance gets tripped up.

What's the easiest way to handle this across multiple jurisdictions?

Build to the strictest rule that applies to any of your locations, then apply it everywhere. The compliance cost of running Philadelphia rules in a no-law state is rounding-error; the cost of running Texas rules in Philadelphia is five figures per audit. Pair that with a scheduling tool that publishes the schedule to mobile in advance and keeps an audit trail of shift changes — see how Teamsly compares to other scheduling tools — so you can show what was published, when, and who edited it.