SB 553's other tool: the employer-filed workplace violence restraining order. When it applies, how the employee opt-out works, and why your incident log matters.
Most of the attention on SB 553 goes to the workplace violence prevention plan: the written plan, the log, the annual training. The same law also strengthened a tool that gets far less attention and matters in the moments when a plan is not enough. Under Code of Civil Procedure 527.8, a California employer can ask a court for a restraining order on behalf of an employee who has suffered harassment, unlawful violence, or a credible threat of violence at work.
One detail matters up front: the employee cannot file this kind of petition alone. The employer, or the employee's collective bargaining representative, is the petitioner. That makes it a management responsibility, and most managers have never heard of it.
The scenarios are the ones that keep HR and security leads up at night. An employee's former partner who keeps showing up at the office or the job site. A customer whose fixation on a staff member has moved from strange to threatening. A terminated employee sending credible threats to the team that let them go. The statute covers harassment, meaning a knowing and willful course of conduct that would cause a reasonable person substantial emotional distress, as well as violence and credible threats.
The threat does not have to be carried out at the workplace. It has to be a threat that can reasonably be construed to be carried out there, or to have been. Conduct that follows an employee from home to work is exactly the gap this order fills.
Before filing, the employer must give the affected employee the opportunity to decline being named in the temporary restraining order. Some employees fear that being named will make things worse, and the law respects that judgment: the employer can still seek the order on behalf of other employees at the workplace. Handle this conversation carefully and in private. It is the employee's call, not a formality.
The court can restrain the respondent from contacting, threatening, stalking, or coming within a specified distance of the employee. At the court's discretion, the order can extend to other employees at the workplace, and even to other worksites of the employer. For a company with a harasser targeting one person but roaming between offices, that breadth matters. A violation of the order is a crime, which gives the police something to act on before anything worse happens.
At the hearing, the judge looks for clear and convincing evidence. That is a high bar, and it is where preparation shows. Declarations from witnesses, saved messages, incident dates, photographs, call logs. This is also where your SB 553 paperwork quietly earns its keep: a violent incident log that has been kept honestly is exactly the record a petition is built from. Employers who treat the log as paperwork discover its real purpose the day they need a court to take a threat seriously.
The time to learn this process is not the day someone shows up in your lobby. Know that the tool exists, know that your counsel can move on it quickly, and make sure the incident log and reporting culture underneath it are real. Employees who trust that reporting a threat leads somewhere will tell you early, when the options are still good.
This is a legal process, and a petition belongs in an attorney's hands. The security work around it, documenting incidents, hardening the site against a specific person, briefing reception and guards on who to watch for, is where we help. Braav supports SB 553 compliance and workplace violence prevention across California. Book a call to talk through your situation.