Can Your Boss Force You to Get a Microchip? A New State Law Sets a Strict Legal Boundary

While no U.S. employers are forcing implants today, lawmakers say rising surveillance tools justify early action.

BY BRUCE CRUMLEY @BRUCEC_INC

Illustration: Getty Images

Job-creating, income-providing business owners aren’t often known as nefarious goons bent on imposing dystopian scenarios in the workplace, or wider life. But Washington State legislators are heading off any employers who eventually get dark, sci-fi ideas about organizing and monitoring their staff. This week, they passed a law banning companies from trying to stick data-transmitting microchips under employees’ skin to monitor them.

At first glance, that may sound like Washington’s progressive politicians allowed their paranoid fears to run away with them when they voted through bill HB2023. Yet that newly passed prohibition has become the fifteenth U.S. state law that similarly bans or vastly limits privacy-invading use of employee surveillance technology by businesses.

But before you cue the “Black Mirror” theme, rest assured that HB2023 wasn’t passed to halt the throngs of business rushing to implant microchips in employees to monitor their every move. In fact, most reports on the new law—which is set to come into effect in June—noted the lack of evidence that any U.S. companies have forced employees to tote a chip under their skin. In fact, a 2024 report by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs found only 50,000 people worldwide had been microchipped, and virtually all of those did so voluntarily.Why would anyone do that? As the Carnegie study noted, those tiny transmitters can replace “swipe keys, credit cards, and (be a) means to instantaneously share social media information.” Indeed, unique identification codes in chips are already used by businesses in badges, allowing employees to enter offices and restricted areas, log on to computers, authorize a variety of administrative tasks, and even pay for lunch at the company cafeteria.

HB2023 just ensures that tech doesn’t wind up getting under workers’ skin—literally. It specifically aims to prevent that happening under pressure from employers, who might require chip implants as a tool to monitor worker movement, productivity, and other data. The bill’s author, Seattle Representative Briana Thomas, readily admits business aren’t taking that step yet, but she wasn’t going take any risks about that happening in the near future.

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“Microchips may seem like science fiction, but the technology is here,” Thomas said in a statement about the new law, saying it’s “Don’t chip me, bro!” reasoning focuses on the potentials for surveillance abuses the tech presents.

“It creates an opportunity for employers to track employees during work hours and at home. That is scary,” Thomas said about the potential of forced implants. “We recognize that the power dynamic between an employer and an employee makes true freedom of choice nearly impossible. This is a big step to help protect our employees from being microchipped by their employer.”

Critics of the newly passed law say it’s a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. Others regret it generating unfounded suspicions that businesses might have been planning to tag staff with chips. But despite those qualms, HB2023 and the previous 14 state laws banning or limiting employer surveillance of staff were based on less speculative concerns.

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