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California appeals court allows insurers to use marital status in car rates
The decision in Ison v. Lara preserves a 1996 regulation, letting insurers charge unmarried drivers higher premiums than married drivers for the same profile.
A divided California Court of Appeal upheld a state regulation that permits auto insurers to use marital status as an optional insurance rating factor. In Ison v. Lara, the July 16 ruling allows carriers to set higher premiums for unmarried drivers than for married drivers with the same profile, according to Insurance Business.
The majority said the regulation remains valid under Civil Code section 51(c), which limits how the Unruh Civil Rights Act is applied when an entitlement or privilege is conditioned by law. The court read the term "law" to include validly adopted regulations, and relied on California Supreme Court precedent that quasi-legislative regulations carry the dignity of statutes.
The panel found the Unruh Act amendments that expanded protected classes in 2005 did not invalidate the earlier marital-status rule, in part because the regulation predated the change and could be harmonized with the broader antidiscrimination provisions. It also held that later amendments under the 2008 Rosenthal Auto Insurance Nondiscrimination Law did not change the Proposition 103 framework for optional rating factors, citing clarification printed in the Assembly Journal.
The ruling was authored by Justice Rodríguez and joined by Justice Fujisaki, while Presiding Justice Alison M. Tucher filed a 30-page dissent. Tucher agreed with the majority on key principles, including that Proposition 103 requires compliance with future civil rights amendments, but disagreed on how section 51(c) should apply to the regulation’s statutory basis.