By Laurence Darmiento, LOS ANGELES TIMES
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.
Single, divorced or widowed and need coverage for your car? You might very well pay more than your married neighbor – a penalty sanctioned by the state and judiciary.
A California appeals court last month upheld a lower court ruling (opens in new tab) 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.
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Harvey Rosenfield, the author of Proposition 103, whose organization, Consumer Watchdog, filed a brief (opens in new tab) in support of the drivers, said marital status “turns Prop 103 upside down” by allowing “unjust demographic characteristics to price auto insurance.”
“That’s why voters ordered the industry to obey the civil rights laws and to base premiums on factors within a person’s control – like their driving safety record and the number of miles they drive every year,” he said.
Only a handful of states, including Massachusetts and Hawaii, have barred marital status as a rating factor.
The regulation allowing marital status to be considered has been around since 1996, when then-California Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush included it in regulations implementing Proposition 103.
