Category: Daily News

Joseph Mayor suffered an industrial injury in December 2013 while working for Ross Valley Sanitation District (Ross Valley). A workers’ compensation judge (WCJ) later found Mayor totally and permanently disabled and issued an award in his favor. On March 23, 2023, Ross Valley timely filed a petition for reconsideration of that award with the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (Board). At the time, former Labor Code section 5909 provided that a petition for reconsideration “is deemed to have been denied” by the Board “unless it is acted upon within 60 days from the date of filing.” The WCJ never acted on the petition as required by regulation, and the Board itself took no action within the 60-day window. Seventy-four days after filing, Ross Valley sent a single inquiry letter asking about the petition’s status; the record does not show the Board ever responded.

One hundred forty-four days after the petition was filed, the Board issued an order granting reconsideration, attaching a “Shipley notice” (referencing Shipley v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (1992) 7 Cal.App.4th 1104) stating that the Board had not received notice of the petition until around June 15, 2023, roughly 84 days after filing, and that its order would be considered timely if issued within 60 days of that later receipt date. Mayor petitioned the Court of Appeal for a writ of mandate seeking to rescind the Board’s order as untimely and to enforce the WCJ’s original award. While that petition was pending, the Board rescinded and reissued its order, this time explicitly invoking Shipley to justify tolling its own deadline based on an unspecified “administrative irregularity” in receiving the petition — a practice the Board said preserved due process and its constitutional mandate to achieve substantial justice.

Also while the matter was pending, the Legislature passed Assembly Bill 171, amending section 5909 (effective as an urgency measure, later made permanent) to run the Board’s 60-day deadline from the date a trial judge transmits a case to the Board, rather than from the date of filing. The Court of Appeal granted Mayor’s writ petition, holding that the version of section 5909 in effect at the time was mandatory and that the Board exceeded its jurisdiction by granting reconsideration more than 60 days after the petition’s filing. The court followed Zurich American Ins. Co. v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (2023) 97 Cal.App.5th 1213, which had reached the same conclusion on similar facts, and read the Legislature’s subsequent amendment as tacit acquiescence in that interpretation. (Mayor v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd. (2024) 104 Cal.App.5th 1297.) The California Supreme Court granted review, and, while review was pending, deferred several other cases raising the same issue, including one, City of Salinas v. Workers’ Comp. Appeals Bd., that had reached the opposite conclusion on whether the deadline is jurisdictional.

In the present case of Mayor v. Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, No. S287261 (Cal. Sup. Ct., August 2026) — the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeal granting Mayor’s petition for writ of mandate. However it was for somewhat different reasons.

A unanimous Supreme Court first addressed whether former section 5909’s 60-day deadline implicated the Board’s fundamental jurisdiction — a status that, unlike an ordinary mandatory deadline, cannot be waived, forfeited, or excused by equitable considerations. Applying the framework from Kabran v. Sharp Memorial Hospital (2017) 2 Cal.5th 330 and Law Finance Group, LLC v. Key (2023) 14 Cal.5th 932, the Court explained that a deadline is jurisdictional only where the Legislature signals that intent through unusually emphatic language, not merely by setting an exception-free deadline. The Court found no such language in former section 5909, contrasting it with neighboring provisions the Court has held are jurisdictional — section 5900’s requirement that petitions “shall be made only within the time and manner specified,” and section 5950’s 45-day deadline to seek judicial review “within the time limit specified in this section.” Because former section 5909 contained no comparably emphatic language and the Board’s continuing jurisdiction over its own awards is otherwise broadly preserved by section 5803 (limited only by a five-year outer boundary in section 5804), the Court held the 60-day deadline is mandatory but not jurisdictional in the fundamental sense: the Board’s grant-for-study order after the deadline was in excess of its jurisdiction, not void for lack of fundamental power to act at all.

That conclusion did not end the analysis, since even a nonjurisdictional deadline can be closed to equitable tolling if the Legislature so intends. The Court held the Board’s practice of self-tolling its own deadline was unsupported by the statute’s text or purpose. Equitable tolling, the Court explained, is a doctrine that excuses a litigant’s late filing where the litigant gave timely notice, caused no prejudice, and acted reasonably and in good faith — elements that presuppose a party seeking relief from its own deadline, not an adjudicative body extending the time allotted for its own decision. The Board, the Court held, is neither a litigant nor a party, and former section 5909 is not a statute of limitations at all, since it does not fix a deadline for anyone to bring a claim; it simply caps how long the Board has to act. The Court found no precedent applying equitable tolling to an adjudicative body’s own decisional deadline, and held the statute’s plain text — deeming a petition denied by operation of law after 60 days, with no textual exception — was inconsistent with allowing the Board to extend that period on its own initiative.

The Court also limited the reach of Shipley itself, disapproving it to the extent it suggests a categorical due process right to Board review of any timely-filed petition regardless of the 60-day deadline. Shipley, the Court explained, never applied or even mentioned the equitable tolling doctrine; it turned instead on the due process problems created when the Board misplaced a claimant’s file and repeatedly, affirmatively assured him his petition would eventually be considered. The Board could not convert that narrow due-process holding into a general license to toll its own statutory clock whenever an “administrative irregularity” caused it to receive a petition late, particularly where, as here, Ross Valley itself never asserted any due process violation. The Court left open what circumstances might support a due process claim in a future case, but held none was properly before it here.

Finally, the Court held writ relief in the Court of Appeal was the proper vehicle for Mayor’s challenge, rejecting the Board’s argument that Mayor’s only remedy was a later petition for writ of review of a final decision on the merits. Because the Board had already asserted jurisdiction and ruled on the petition when Mayor filed his writ petition, and because forcing an injured worker to wait indefinitely for a final decision would render the 60-day deadline’s protection of an expeditious end to proceedings meaningless, the Court agreed a writ of mandate (more precisely, the Court noted in a footnote, one properly framed as a writ of prohibition) was available to enforce the Board’s ministerial duty to act, if at all, within the statutory window. The Court expressed no view on whether or how Ross Valley might now seek relief from the consequences of the Board’s untimely action, since Ross Valley had not requested any relief of its own before the Court.

In a confusing Footnote 4, the court stated “We express no opinion on the propriety of the grant-for-study practice or whether the Appeals Board is required to issue a final decision on the merits within the 60-day statutory period pursuant to section 5908.5.”

Michael Mitchell, Khiry Crawford, Tyler Echevarria, and Anthony McCune formerly worked for Lilac Solutions, Inc., a company that manufactures lithium-extraction technology. Each had signed an arbitration agreement upon accepting employment. On December 6, 2024, the four plaintiffs sued Lilac and five managerial employees with health-and-safety-related roles (collectively, the Lilac Defendants), alleging thirteen causes of action arising from claimed exposure to harmful chemicals, wrongful termination, and gender and disability discrimination, including five Fair Employment and Housing Act claims. The fifth cause of action, pleaded far more conclusorily than the other twelve, alleged sexual harassment.

Rather than immediately moving to compel arbitration, the Lilac Defendants answered the complaint, asserted their arbitration right only as an affirmative defense, and filed a cross-complaint and amended cross-complaint for trade secret violations, neither of which sought a stay of the case. Over the following three months, they served 12 sets of written discovery, noticed depositions of each plaintiff plus two third parties, served 11 nonparty subpoenas, responded to 33 sets of the plaintiffs’ own discovery requests, and filed seven procedural motions, including motions to seal, to designate the case complex, and for a protective order. Only after the plaintiffs filed an anti-SLAPP motion targeting the amended cross-complaint did the Lilac Defendants, five days later, file their motion to compel arbitration on March 18, 2025, arguing the EFAA did not apply because the sexual harassment claim was not plausibly pled.

The Alameda County Superior Court denied the motion to compel arbitration, finding the Lilac Defendants had waived their contractual right to arbitrate. Drawing on factors from Fleming Distribution Co. v. Younan (2020) 49 Cal.App.5th 73 and Kokubu v. Sudo (2022) 76 Cal.App.5th 1074, the court found the Lilac Defendants’ filing of a cross-complaint and amended cross-complaint without seeking a stay was inconsistent with invoking arbitration, that they had substantially invoked the litigation machinery before seeking arbitration, and that they had taken advantage of judicial discovery procedures unavailable in arbitration. The Lilac Defendants appealed.

In the published case of Mitchell et al. v. Lilac Solutions, Inc., et al., No. A173736 (Cal. Ct. App., 1st Dist., Div. 4, August 2026) — the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s order denying the Lilac Defendants’ motion to compel arbitration.

Writing for a unanimous panel, Justice Streate first addressed the Lilac Defendants’ argument that the trial court relied on outdated law. Before the California Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Quach v. California Commerce Club, Inc. (2024) 16 Cal.5th 562, California courts applied a six-factor test from St. Agnes Medical Center v. PacifiCare of California (2003) 31 Cal.4th 1187 that required the party opposing arbitration to show prejudice. Quach, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in Morgan v. Sundance, Inc. (2022) 596 U.S. 411, abandoned that arbitration-specific prejudice requirement, holding waiver instead requires clear and convincing evidence that a party knew of its contractual right and intentionally relinquished it, based solely on the waiving party’s own words and conduct.

The panel held the trial court’s order was consistent with Quach even though it never cited the decision and predated it only by a matter of months, since courts presume a trial judge knows the governing law absent an affirmative indication otherwise, and nothing in the order relied on the prejudice component Quach eliminated. Because the trial court’s approach was legally sound, the panel applied deferential substantial evidence review rather than the de novo review the Lilac Defendants sought, distinguishing a case where a trial court’s order necessarily predated Quach and thus could not have applied it.

Applying that deferential standard, the panel found each of the three factors the trial court relied on well supported. Filing a cross-complaint and amended cross-complaint without seeking a stay reflected an intentional relinquishment of the right to arbitrate, particularly given the Lilac Defendants’ extensive discovery campaign over three months, which the panel found factually comparable to the litigation conduct that supported waiver in Quach itself. The panel rejected the argument that filing compulsory cross-claims excused this conduct, since the Lilac Defendants’ overall pattern of words and conduct, not just their pleadings, supported the trial court’s finding.

The panel devoted particular attention to the Lilac Defendants’ argument that the EFAA put them in an impossible bind, since existing authority holds that a single viable sexual harassment claim within a complaint renders an entire case nonarbitrable, and they needed time to develop facts undermining the harassment claim before a motion to compel could succeed. The panel found this explanation did not match the record: the scope of discovery went well beyond what a motion targeting the fifth cause of action alone would have required, and the Lilac Defendants never filed or signaled a forthcoming motion for summary adjudication on that claim during the three months before their motion to compel, which followed the plaintiffs’ anti-SLAPP motion by only five days. The panel noted the Lilac Defendants could have sought a stay of proceedings except for narrowly tailored discovery aimed at the harassment allegations, or invoked the trial court’s inherent authority to sequence the case efficiently, but did neither. On this record, the panel found the more natural reading was that the motion to compel arbitration was a reactive litigation countermove to the anti-SLAPP motion rather than a considered EFAA strategy, though the panel emphasized no finding of gamesmanship was necessary to affirm.

Concluding that clear and convincing evidence supported the trial court’s finding that the Lilac Defendants intentionally abandoned their right to arbitrate through their conduct in the case’s early months, the panel affirmed the order denying arbitration and awarded the plaintiffs their costs on appeal.

Dr. Ding Ding, a Wharton graduate with a pharmacology Ph.D. and over twenty years in biopharmaceutical investment banking, was recruited in 2021 to serve as Chief Financial Officer of Structure Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical drug development company preparing for an initial public offering. Before recruiting her, Structure’s CEO, Dr. Raymond Stevens, had circulated an email describing his “ideal phenotype” for the CFO role using two men as example candidates, though the company’s board pushed for gender diversity in the search. Dr. Ding’s offer of employment required arbitration of all employment disputes with JAMS.

According to her complaint, Dr. Stevens began sidelining Dr. Ding almost immediately after she started, limiting her duties and dismissing her contributions, and in January 2022 relayed unsubstantiated complaints from Wall Street bankers that she was “too aggressive.” On March 7, 2022, Dr. Ding was injured in a domestic violence incident; when she returned to work with visible facial injuries, Dr. Stevens commented that he could “hardly see anything” and repeatedly questioned whether she wanted to reconsider her role given her “transition in life,” while also blocking her from an upcoming executive meeting. Ten days after the incident, Stevens recommended her termination to the board, and Structure terminated her on March 22, 2022, without citing any performance issue; Stevens later testified he relied in part on male bankers’ complaints that she “lectured” them.

Dr. Ding filed an arbitration demand with JAMS in October 2022, asserting discrimination and harassment claims based on national origin and her status as a domestic violence victim. Over the following year, the parties litigated preliminary hearings, discovery, and a discovery dispute, and the arbitrator ruled on choice-of-law issues. During that discovery, Dr. Ding first obtained evidence she says revealed her mistreatment was actually motivated by her sex, including Stevens’s “phenotype” email, the board’s gender-diversity goal, and Stevens’s reliance on male bankers’ complaints. In October 2023, Dr. Ding withdrew from arbitration under a California procedural rule addressing Structure’s late payment of arbitration fees, and JAMS closed its file. She then sued Structure and Stevens in California state court, adding sex discrimination and sex-based hostile work environment claims under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), along with a claim based on her domestic-violence-victim status.

Structure removed the case to federal court and moved to compel arbitration, arguing the California rule on late arbitration-fee payment was preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and the New York Convention. Dr. Ding countered that regardless of preemption, the arbitration agreement was invalid under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA), which lets a person alleging conduct constituting a sexual harassment or sexual assault dispute elect to invalidate a predispute arbitration agreement and proceed in court. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California agreed that the state procedural rule was preempted, but held Dr. Ding had properly elected to proceed under the EFAA based on a plausible sexual harassment allegation, and, after permitting her to add New York law claims, denied Structure’s motion to compel arbitration on that ground.

In the published case of Ding v. Structure Therapeutics, Inc., No. 25-1532 (9th Cir., August 2026) — the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying Structure’s motion to compel arbitration.

Writing for the majority, Judge Sanchez rejected Structure’s argument that a plaintiff is categorically barred from making an EFAA election after first filing non-sexual-harassment claims in arbitration. Reviewing the statute’s text, 9 U.S.C. § 402(a), the panel found nothing limiting when a plaintiff may allege a sexual harassment claim or make her election, and held that because Dr. Ding was not yet “alleging conduct constituting a sexual harassment dispute” when she filed her original arbitration demand, she could not have triggered an EFAA election at that time; she made her one election only when she filed in federal court after discovering the sex-based nature of her treatment. The panel found this reading reinforced by the EFAA’s legislative purpose of giving harassment victims “a real choice” whether to arbitrate, and distinguished the ordinary rule, drawn from Morgan v. Sundance, Inc. (2022) 596 U.S. 411, that federal arbitration policy favors treating arbitration contracts like other contracts rather than fostering arbitration generally.

The panel also rejected Structure’s argument that Dr. Ding waived her EFAA rights by filing in arbitration despite already knowing the facts underlying a sexual harassment claim. Applying ordinary waiver principles — the intentional relinquishment of a known right — the panel held this argument was foreclosed by the district court’s factual finding, reviewed for clear error, that no record evidence showed Dr. Ding knew she had a plausible sexual harassment claim but chose not to bring it when she initiated arbitration.

Turning to the merits, the panel held Dr. Ding plausibly pled a sex-based hostile work environment claim under the FEHA, which in turn qualifies as a “sexual harassment dispute” under the EFAA’s definition. Applying the FEHA standard from Lyle v. Warner Bros. Television Productions (2006) 38 Cal.4th 264 and Hughes v. Pair (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1035, the panel found Dr. Ding alleged severe or pervasive harassment (Stevens’s preference for a male CFO, his adoption of gendered “too aggressive” criticisms, his dismissive comments about her domestic violence injuries, and her termination without any performance-related justification), that the alleged conduct created an objectively and subjectively offensive environment comparable to that in Roby v. McKesson Corp. (2009) 47 Cal.4th 686, and that the conduct was plausibly based on her sex. Because the EFAA invalidates the arbitration agreement as to an entire “case” relating to a sexual harassment dispute rather than claim-by-claim, the panel held Dr. Ding was entitled to bring her whole case, including her national-origin and domestic-violence-based claims, in court.

Judge Rawlinson dissented, arguing the majority’s rule conflicts with the statute’s plain text, its legislative history, and the ordinary legal meaning of “election.” In her view, an employee gets only one election under the EFAA, and Dr. Ding made hers when she filed and substantially litigated her claims in arbitration for over a year, including discovery, stipulations, and discovery disputes, before withdrawing. She would have applied the Ninth Circuit’s arbitration-waiver precedents, including Holley-Gallegly v. TA Operating, LLC (2023) 74 F.4th 997, and pointed to the EFAA’s lack of retroactivity as evidence Congress meant to avoid disrupting ongoing arbitrations, concluding that Dr. Ding’s belated invocation of the statute after extensive arbitration proceedings was not the kind of election the EFAA authorizes.

A coordinated impersonation scam targeting injured workers has now prompted official warnings from state workers’ compensation agencies, labor departments, and attorneys general in at least ten states since the start of 2026, with two more states flagging related or adjacent activity. The pattern across nearly every warning is strikingly consistent: scammers posing as workers’ compensation judges, hearing officers, attorneys, or state officials contact injured workers directly and tell them a settlement or benefit payment is ready to be released — but only after a fee is paid first.

Despite the scam’s spread across at least ten states since January 2026, no state agency alert, attorney general release, or industry roundup reviewed identifies a suspect, names a defendant, or reports an arrest tied to the scheme.

According to the state alerts, scammers reach claimants by phone, email, text message, video call, or social media, often using official-looking government seals, letterhead, or even the forged names and signatures of real judges or attorneys to appear legitimate. One especially convincing version stages a fake virtual hearing, walking the claimant through what feels like a real proceeding before a “judge” or “government representative,” only to inform them afterward that a fee must be paid before their benefits or settlement will be released. Tennessee’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation separately identified a related tactic involving fraudulent “Payment Authorization Forms” that request a claimant’s banking or mailing information under the guise of processing a payout. Legitimate workers’ compensation benefits and settlements never require an injured worker to pay money upfront to receive funds they are owed, and state agencies do not initiate contact with claimants by text message, video call, or social media to request payment or schedule a hearing.

The earliest documented warning came from Colorado’s Division of Workers’ Compensation in January 2026, which alerted injured workers that scammers were posing as the Division itself, the courts, judges, and attorneys to solicit money. Warnings then spread quickly through February: Idaho’s Industrial Commission (February 12) flagged fraudulent settlement notices using fake Department of Labor seals and forged judges’ signatures; Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services (February 12) warned specifically that Spanish-speaking injured workers were being targeted through fake hearings and settlement communications, a warning later confirmed by an actual Oregon case the Oregon Department of Justice addressed directly in April 2026; Tennessee’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (February 24, updated May 2026 to likewise flag Spanish-speaking claimants as a specific target) warned of impersonators claiming to represent its Court of Workers’ Compensation Claims; and the Texas Division of Workers’ Compensation (February 25) issued a similar warning about officials being impersonated for fraud schemes. Montana’s Department of Labor and Industry issued its own scam warning around the same time (February 10); Montana was also cited in Oregon’s alert as a state where the scheme had reportedly spread, though Montana’s own posted warning describes a related but seemingly distinct email-phishing scheme rather than an identical match to the hearing/settlement-fee pattern seen elsewhere — worth treating as adjacent rather than confirmed identical.

By April, the pattern had reached Utah, where the state Labor Commission described it as a nationwide scam impersonating the Commission, its Industrial Accidents Division, and federal labor officials, with contact information for the Industrial Accidents Division published in follow-up local coverage. Industry publication WorkersCompensation.com’s April roundup tied the Utah, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas warnings together as a single emerging national pattern. By late May and into June, North Carolina’s Industrial Commission and Attorney General Jeff Jackson issued a joint warning describing a multi-state operation using fake virtual hearings and official-looking communications, and Washington’s Attorney General issued a preemptive consumer alert in June specifically warning Spanish-speaking workers, noting that while no confirmed Washington cases had yet been reported, the scam’s spread across neighboring Pacific Northwest states warranted getting ahead of it. Minnesota’s Office of Administrative Hearings has also posted an undated alert covering the same pattern.

A July 31, 2026 roundup by claims-industry vendor Ethos Risk, drawing on the same state alerts along with additional reporting, adds two data points worth noting: Arizona’s Industrial Commission issued its own consumer alert (date not independently confirmed in this review) describing the identical impersonation tactics, and Illinois’s Workers’ Compensation Commission is described as continuing to maintain a public alert about scammers posing as judges, attorneys, and state employees, though this review was not able to independently locate that specific IWCC alert page to confirm its current content firsthand.

State agencies and industry sources recommend a consistent set of precautions: legitimate workers’ compensation benefits and settlements never require an upfront payment before funds are released; state agencies do not contact claimants by text message, video call, or social media to request money or schedule a hearing; requests for payment via gift card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency are a strong indicator of fraud; and any suspicious communication should be verified using independently sourced contact information for the relevant state agency, not a phone number, email, or link contained in the suspicious message itself. The Federal Trade Commission maintains general guidance on recognizing government-impersonation scams that applies to this pattern as well.

The Gann Fire ignited on August 3, 2026, near Hogan Dam Road and Gann Road outside Valley Springs in Calaveras County. By the time Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a State of Emergency for the county on August 6, the fire had burned more than 10,300 acres, forced the evacuation of 1,473 residents with another 1,400 under evacuation warnings, resulted in one fatality, and threatened homes, structures, and electrical transmission and distribution infrastructure serving northern Calaveras County. More than 2,700 personnel, 12 helicopters, 247 fire engines, 46 dozers, and 25 water tenders were deployed to fight the fire. The proclamation directed the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and other state agencies to support local response and recovery efforts, suspended certain public contracting rules to speed access to emergency resources, and followed the state’s prior securing of a federal Fire Management Assistance Grant from FEMA.

That emergency declaration triggered a separate, statutorily defined process at the California Department of Insurance. Under Insurance Code section 675.1, enacted through 2018 legislation (Senate Bill 824), once a state of emergency is declared for a wildfire, insurers are barred from cancelling or refusing to renew residential property insurance policies located within or adjacent to the fire perimeter, for one year from the date of the declaration, based solely on the property being located in a wildfire-affected area. A parallel statute, Insurance Code section 675.55, enacted through 2025 legislation (Senate Bill 547) and effective January 1, 2026, extends the same one-year restriction to certain commercial property insurance policies covering residential or habitational uses — including homeowners associations, condominium associations, long-term rental hotels or motels, apartment complexes, condominium complexes, multifamily dwellings with more than five units, student housing, and senior living facilities.

Under both statutes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), in consultation with Cal OES, determines the fire’s perimeter and supplies that data to the Insurance Commissioner, who then issues a bulletin identifying the specific ZIP Codes subject to the moratorium. On August 14, 2026, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara issued Bulletin 2026-6, identifying 22 ZIP Codes within or adjacent to the Gann Fire perimeter — spanning Calaveras, San Joaquin, Amador, Tuolumne, and Stanislaus counties — as subject to the moratorium for one year beginning August 6, 2026, the date of the Governor’s declaration. The bulletin directs that no admitted or non-admitted insurer may issue a notice of cancellation or non-renewal due to wildfire risk, for the specified duration, for residential property insurance (including homeowners’, condo unit owners’, mobile homeowners’, and renters’ policies) or qualifying commercial property insurance located in those ZIP Codes. The bulletin also directs insurers to offer to rescind any cancellation or non-renewal notices already issued for wildfire risk on or after August 6, 2026 for properties in the affected ZIP Codes, and to offer to reinstate or renew the policies those notices would have terminated.

In an accompanying press release issued the same day, the Department of Insurance stated that the moratorium applies to more than 64,000 residential policyholders in the five affected counties. The release noted this is the first time the commercial-property moratorium under Senate Bill 547 has applied following a wildfire emergency declaration since that law took effect, and stated that Commissioner Lara’s office reported the equivalent residential moratorium mechanism applied to more than 1.2 million homeowners across the state’s wildfire emergencies in 2025. The release also noted that homeowners who have suffered a total property loss in a declared disaster are separately entitled to up to 24 months of protection from non-renewal or cancellation under existing law, a longer period than the one-year moratorium that applies regardless of whether an individual policyholder suffered a loss.

Taken together, the sequence runs as follows: a wildfire triggers a gubernatorial emergency declaration; that declaration activates the statutory ZIP-Code-based insurance moratorium process; CAL FIRE and Cal OES supply fire-perimeter data to the Department of Insurance; and the Insurance Commissioner then issues a bulletin naming the specific ZIP Codes where insurers are barred from cancelling or non-renewing residential and qualifying commercial property policies for one year, regardless of whether a given policyholder’s property was actually damaged.