California

California state has a strict pay transparency law

You can find the full law as passed here https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1162

You can find the current law as ammended here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1162

California Considers Non-Competes to be illegal.

Under California law, Non competes are not valid contracts per (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=16600.&lawCode=BPC)[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=16600.&lawCode=BPC]

California has its own minimum wage laws

Check the county that you live in as California has multiple minimal wages depending on where in CA you live. Either way, the federal one still applies.

California state Considers project based interviews a violation of its minimum wage laws.

Even if California didn’t have a minimum wage law of its own, the federal one would still apply. You can find the details of “The California Equal Pay Act” on the website about it at https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/california_equal_pay_act.htm

Californai makes it illegal to ask for past wages.

In CA just like many other states, it is illegal to ask a person about thier past wages, and its considered to be the same civil rights issue that many other states quantify it as: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=432.3.&lawCode=LAB

California state has a thriving tech hub.

California state also sees growing its own tech sector as part of its own growth.

This is largely in part because the state has learned over time that it is in its own best interests to promote the fair hiring of software engineers to assure healthy tech companies that employ them fairly and ethically, in a sustainable way, in order to collect tax money from that.

California state makes it illegal to record anybody in private, execept the police.

California state is an all party consent state, that law is at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=632.&lawCode=PEN

The law that allows you to respectfully record the police in a public place anyway is section (G) of (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=148.&lawCode=PEN)[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=148.&lawCode=PEN] at the time of this writing.