France made it legal for employees to ignore work email after hours.
On January 1, 2017, France became one of the first countries to enact a right to disconnect law, requiring companies with more than fifty employees to negotiate policies establishing hours during which staff were not expected to send or respond to work-related email.1 The law, known as droit à la déconnexion, did not ban after-hours communication outright. It required companies to define the boundaries.
The legislation responded to the disappearance of the boundary between work time and personal time that smartphones and email had created. A 2016 French government report found that digital tools had made it possible for work to follow employees home in ways that previous technologies had not, contributing to burnout and deteriorating health.2
Other countries followed. Italy enacted right-to-disconnect provisions in 2017 as part of its smart working legislation. Spain included disconnect protections in its 2018 data protection law. Portugal passed legislation in 2021 prohibiting employers from contacting workers outside business hours. Australia enacted a right to disconnect law effective in 2024, applying to most employees with exceptions for reasonable contact.3
As of 2025, the United States had no federal right to disconnect legislation. The concept of legally protected non-work time, taken for granted in the era of the factory whistle, required new legislation in the era of the smartphone.