California has long been known as a progressive state that embraces evolving lifestyles, but when it comes to auto insurance, it seems stuck in the 1950s.<\/p>\n
Single, divorced or widowed and need coverage for your car? You might very well pay more than your married neighbor \u2014 a penalty sanctioned by the state and judiciary. <\/p>\n
A California appeals court last month upheld a lower court ruling <\/a>that rejected a lawsuit seeking to abolish the right of insurers to charge the unwed more because of their higher statistical chance of getting into crashes. The decision is expected to be appealed.<\/p>\n The lawsuit by 11 unmarried drivers specifically sought a court order that would have forced Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to eliminate marriage as an optional factor in setting rates \u2014 but he opposed it, even as regulators bar the consideration of sex, age, race and other personal characteristics.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really a question about whether the insurance commissioner has the ability to pick and choose what civil rights laws are appropriate to enforce,\u201d said Christian Schreiber, who is among several attorneys representing the drivers who also have filed proposed class actions against 12 insurers over the rule.<\/p>\n A test conducted by the Consumer Federation of America, cited in a legal brief<\/a> in support of the litigation, found that unmarried drivers pay more.<\/p>\n Single, divorced and widowed drivers got quotes in April 2025 that were up to $108 higher for six months of premiums from four out of five California carriers.<\/p>\n Mercury, a large Los Angeles-based insurer, charged the highest differential, though it offered lower rates to widowed motorists with 34 or more years of driving experience. It declined to comment on the litigation.<\/p>\n State Farm, California\u2019s largest auto insurer, charged the same for married and unmarried drivers.<\/p>\n Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California<\/a>, a trade group that includes Mercury and other big auto insurers, said carriers charge the higher rates with good reason: unmarried people get into more collisions.<\/p>\n \u201cI always assumed that marriage was related to a person being more likely to have kids, and so you\u2019re going to drive safer if you\u2019ve got kids in the car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The demographic also helps capture the drivers most likely to get into crashes: young male drivers, since insurers in California are prohibited from considering sex and age in setting rates.<\/p>\n In arriving at the July 16 decision, the 1st Appellate District panel in San Francisco reasoned that two state civil rights laws that bar discrimination based on marital status have to defer to Proposition 103, the 1988 ballot measure that governs the state\u2019s property and casualty insurance industry.<\/p>\n The proposition gave the insurance commissioner the authority to establish optional auto insurance rating factors that are predictive of loss claims \u2014 in addition to a policyholder\u2019s driving record, experience and annual miles driven, three mandatory rating factors.<\/p>\n Among the legal arguments cited in the 2-1 majority opinion is that the state\u2019s bedrock civil rights act<\/a> doesn\u2019t confer any right limited by law, in this case the authority the voter-passed proposition gives to the insurance commissioner to establish optional ratings factors that aren\u2019t arbitrary.<\/p>\n A dissent by presiding Justice Alison Tucher concluded the majority misread the proposition, which she said must adhere to the state\u2019s civil rights laws.<\/p>\n