A prior disability and a new work injury? What SB 171 changed in July 2026

What the fund is for

Money for the combination, from a payer that is not your employer.

Your employer is liable only for the share of your permanent disability that the work injury caused. When part of the disability is blamed on something else, a process called apportionmentApportionment Dividing permanent disability between industrial and non-industrial causes. It is to disability, not to findings on an image., that part comes off what the employer owes. For a worker with a serious old disability, that leaves a gap. The Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund, usually called SIBTF, pays it. In the Division of Workers’ Compensation’s words, the fund “enables employers to hire disabled workers without fear of being held liable for the effects of previous disabilities or impairments.”

It is a separate claim. The fund is not your employer or its insurer. It is a separate defendant, defended by the Attorney General or counsel for the Department of Industrial Relations, paid for by an assessment on California employers, and decided by the Workers’ Compensation Appeals BoardWCAB Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. The court system that decides these cases. 23 district offices statewide..

The old disability can come from anything. A car accident, an illness, a condition you were born with, an earlier work injury. What matters is that it was labor disabling when the new injury happened: that it actually limited the work you could do, not only that it appeared in a chart.

What it pays, illustrated. Take an illustrative worker who clears the fund’s thresholds. The new injury alone is rated 40% permanent disability. The old disability and the new injury, rated together, come to 85%. The employer pays permanent disability on the 40%, which is below 70%, so it owes no life pension. The fund pays the difference between the value of 85% and the value of 40%, less the credits the law allows, and it pays the life pension. With weekly earnings at or above the $515.38 the formula counts, that is 1.5% × (85 − 60) × $515.38 = $193.27 a week, for life. It begins after the permanent disability weeks run out, and it rises each year with the state average weekly wage.

SIBTF after SB 171 I have an old injury and a new one

What SB 171 changed, and from when

One bill, approved July 13, 2026, and a line drawn at June 1.

SB 171 (Stats. 2026, ch. 83) was approved on July 13, 2026, and it rewrote the statute that governs the fund. Anything written about SIBTF before mid-July 2026 describes rules that no longer govern most claims. The changes, in short:

• The measure. Thresholds are read in whole person impairmentWPI — Whole Person Impairment The percentage from the AMA Guides that a rating is built from. Extremity percent is not whole person percent: 100% upper extremity = 60% whole person, 100% lower extremity = 40%. This is the most common source of confusion in a rating., the doctor’s own percentage, with no 1.4 factor and no adjustment for future earning capacityFEC / DFEC Future Earning Capacity / Diminished Future Earning Capacity. An adjustment factor applied to older injuries., occupation or age.
• The arithmetic. Several impairments are combined, not added.
• The proof. The old disability has to be shown with evidence that existed when the new injury happened.
• The examiner. Medical-legal evaluations go through the standard Qualified Medical EvaluatorQME Qualified Medical Evaluator. A state-certified physician who resolves disputes. Unrepresented workers get a panel of three by random draw. process, not evaluators chosen by the worker’s side.
• Two bars. Nothing more from the fund if the new injury alone is 100% permanent total disabilityPTD Permanent Total Disability. 100%. Paid at the temporary disability rate for life., and no second application after a fund award on 100% combined disability.
• The paperwork. You must give the Director of Industrial Relations the documentation the Director requires to decide eligibility.
• Two clocks. The fund’s first statute of limitations, and its first deadline to pay.

From when, and for whom. The bill declares its changes procedural and applies them to every fund claim without a final determination, including claims pending for years. A grandfather provision, in its own section below, keeps the old rules for cases that had reached certain milestones.

The numbers behind it. A study prepared for the state, published in 2024, found that applications rose from about 850 a year in 2010 through 2014 to 2,650 in 2021, and annual payments from $13.6 million in 2010 to $232 million in 2022. It put the expected liability for the fund’s 2010 through 2022 cases at about $7.9 billion.

What changed in 2026

Who qualifies now

A floor and a gateway, and you need both.

Under the amended statute, a claim needs four things:

1. One or more permanent disabilities that existed before the work injury and were actually labor disabling when it happened.
2. A compensable work injury after them.
3. A combined disability greater than the new injury alone would have produced.
4. A combined disability of 70% or more, measured the new way.

It also needs one of two gateways. Each is measured on the new injury alone, after apportionment, which means after the share of its impairment blamed on other causes is taken out:

• The opposite limb or eye. The old disability was to a hand, arm, foot, leg or eye, the new injury is to the opposite one, and the new injury’s whole person impairment is 5% or more.
• Any body part, at 35%. The new injury’s whole person impairment is 35% or more.

The floor and the gateway are cumulative: a worker needs both.

The opposite-limb gateway is the one people miss. A worker who lost the use of one eye years ago and now injures the other at work needs only 5% from the new injury, not 35%, as long as the two together reach 70%.

What closes the door. If the new injury alone results in 100% permanent total disability, the fund owes nothing more. And a worker already awarded fund benefits on 100% combined disability may not apply a second time.

The 1.4 factor, taken out of the count

The same impairment now counts for less at the gate.

A permanent disability rating starts with whole person impairment: the doctor’s measure, under the AMA Guides, of how much of the function of the whole person the injury has taken, as a percentage. For injuries on or after January 1, 2013, the law then multiplies that figure by 1.4 before adjusting for occupation and age. An impairment of 8 becomes 11.

The amended statute defines the impairment that counts at the fund’s gate as the AMA Guides rating “without adjustment for diminished future earning capacity, occupation or age of the employee, or any other factor, and without multiplication by the 1.4 adjustment factor.” Your rating in the case against your employer still uses the 1.4. The fund’s thresholds no longer do.

The arithmetic is simple:

• The 35% gateway. Before: an impairment of 25, multiplied by 1.4, made 35, and the gateway was cleared. Now the impairment itself has to be 35.
• The 70% floor. Before, leaving occupation and age aside: 50 multiplied by 1.4 made 70. Now the impairment itself has to be 70.

The 1.4 factor raises a standard AMA Guides rating by 40%, so taking it out raises the real bar by about the same proportion. An illustrative worker whose new injury is rated at 25% whole person impairment cleared the 35% gateway before July 2026. With the same body and the same report, that worker is now 10 points short.

Combined, not added

Several impairments now make less than their sum.

Until July 2026, how old and new disabilities were put together for the fund was governed by Todd v. Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund, an en banc decision of the Appeals Board in June 2020. Todd held that prior and subsequent disabilities are added, to the extent they do not overlap. The state’s 2024 study found that Todd made it far more likely that a fund case would reach a combined rating of 100%.

SB 171 ends that. The amended statute says that whole person impairment ratings for multiple body parts “shall not be added, but shall be combined with the subsequent compensable injury.” Combining uses the Combined Values Chart, which applies each further impairment only to the part of the person not already impaired.

Worked through. Take three impairments of 30%, 25% and 20%.

• Added, the old way: 30 + 25 + 20 = 75. That clears the 70% floor.
• Combined, the new way: 25% of the 70% left after the first 30 is about 18, so the first two make 48. Then 20% of the 52% left is about 10, so all three make 58. That is 12 points short.

The reform did not change anyone’s medicine. It changed the arithmetic that decides whether the medicine is enough.

What survives of Todd. The formula for what the fund owes once a case qualifies: the combined disability, less what is due on the new injury, and less the credits the law allows.

The reform did not change anyone’s medicine. It changed the arithmetic that decides whether the medicine is enough.

Permanent disability ratings

Proving the old disability

Records from before the injury, not opinions written after it.

Before SB 171, a doctor’s opinion looking back at how disabled you had been was widely accepted. Now the old disability must rest on evidence that existed at the time of the new injury. It cannot be established by a retroactive prophylactic work restriction: a restriction a doctor describes after the fact, saying you should have been limited before the injury to protect yourself.

That moves the case into the records. The kinds worth gathering:

• Medical records from before the injury. Primary care, urgent care, specialists, physical therapy, and anything paid through your own health insurance.
• An earlier claim’s papers. A prior award, a rating, a settlement, and the reports behind them.
• Work records made at the time. A restriction, an accommodation, a change of duties.

The apportionment report still points the way. When a doctor writes that part of your current disability comes from an old condition, that hurts the claim against your employer, and it may be exactly what opens a claim against the fund. The report itself is written after the injury, so under the new rule it is a pointer rather than the proof. Its list of the records the doctor reviewed is a good place to start.

Apportionment I had a workers’ comp case before

Which side of June 1, 2026

Four milestones decide which rules a pending case keeps.

The new rules apply to every fund claim without a final determination, unless the case meets any one of four conditions:

• A trial date. A district office of the Appeals Board set a trial date before June 1, 2026.
• A pretrial conference statement. One was signed and filed, not merely prepared, before June 1, 2026. It is the document the parties complete at the settlement conference, listing the issues and evidence for trial.
• A Declaration of Readiness. A Declaration of Readiness to ProceedDOR Declaration of Readiness to Proceed. Forces the calendar. You have 10 calendar days to object, or objections to proceeding on its issues are waived. asking for a mandatory settlement conferenceMSC Mandatory Settlement Conference. Where most cases end — and where discovery closes. was filed on or before June 1, 2026.
• An early application. The fund application was filed on or before July 1, 2020.

Read the small words. A Declaration of Readiness filed on June 1, 2026 itself counts. A trial date set that day does not.

What each side gets. A case with any one milestone keeps the 1.4 factor and the Todd addition rule. A case with none loses both, retroactively. The grandfather provision itself becomes inoperative on July 1, 2031.

The new deadlines, on both sides

One deadline for your claim, and one for the fund’s check.

Your deadline. Before SB 171 no statute set a deadline, a statute of limitations, for a fund claim; case law set a looser one, tied to when the worker knew or should have known of the claim. Now a claim has to be brought within five years from the date of the new injury, or within six months from the resolution of permanent disability in that claim, whichever is later. Write both dates down; the later one is the deadline. Which event counts as the resolution can be argued, so plan from the earlier reading. If either date is close, or already behind you, ask.

The documents the fund asks for. You must give the Director the documentation and information the Director requires to decide eligibility. In practice, this is where claims stall. Treat a records request as a deadline even when it does not arrive with one.

The fund’s deadline. The statute now says: “Any payments by SIBTF under this article shall commence within 30 days of the final determination of SIBTF liability.” Before SB 171 there was no statutory payment clock on the fund at all. If a final determination has issued and nothing has arrived in a month, that is now a statutory violation, not merely a slow agency.

The honest timeline. These have been slow claims: historically, five to ten years. The state’s 2024 study counted just over 15,000 cases pending at the start of 2023, against 1,284 resolved with benefits in 2022. Of 27,047 cases from 2010 through 2022 that the state’s researchers followed, about 24% had been resolved with benefits and about 54% were still unresolved.

What SB 171 did not change

The fund still pays for the combination, and the life pension is intact.

• Where the old disability came from. It can still be anything, work-related or not.
• The separate claim. The fund is still a separate defendant, in a separate proceeding.
• Settling the underlying case. A fund claim still survives a compromise and release of the case against the employer, and the new statute contemplates it.
• The life pension. A case that qualifies is still paid on the combined disability, and short of 100% that includes the life pension.
• The employer’s share. The employer still pays only for what its injury caused.

How the underlying case closes still decides a great deal. A compromise and release is a lump sum that closes the claim. Stipulations with an award are an agreed permanent disability rating, made an award by a judge. The reason is the offset: the fund takes credit for what you already received, and a lump sum with no stipulated permanent disability rating leaves the fund claim without the foundation it needs.

• Settlements: the two structures
• A settlement offer, read line by line
• Already settled

The other half of the bill: the § 5909 clock

The Board’s 60 days now run from the judge’s transmittal, for good.

The same bill changed a rule that matters after a judge’s final decision. A party who disagrees has 20 days to petition the Appeals Board for reconsideration, and the law deems the petition denied unless the Board acts within 60 days. What changed, twice in two years, is the law on the day those 60 days start.

• Before July 2, 2024. The day the petition was filed.
• From July 2, 2024. The day a trial judge transmits the case to the Board, under AB 171 (Stats. 2024, ch. 52), with a sunset date of July 1, 2026.
• From July 13, 2026. Still the transmittal, now with no sunset. SB 171 struck the sunset and repealed the version that would have brought back the filing date.

You are entitled to know when the clock started. The trial judge has to give notice of the transmittal, and service of the judge’s report counts as that notice. Write down its date. If the 60 days pass without action, the petition is deemed denied, and a petition for a writ of review, asking the Court of Appeal to look at the case, is due within 45 days.

A panel decision still applies. In Reed v. County of San Bernardino, a significant panel decision of November 2024, the Board counted the 60 days from the day the case appeared as “Sent to Recon” in EAMSEAMS Electronic Adjudication Management System. The Board’s case file system., its electronic case system. Reed construed the trigger still in force.

This site had this rule backwards until August 23, 2026, when the chaptered bill was read again. The correction is logged.

The claim, start to finish Corrections

What to do if you had a disability before this injury

Five steps, and a file to start this month.

1. Say it early. Tell your doctors, the evaluator and, under oath, the defense about every prior injury and condition.
2. Read the apportionment paragraph. A share of your disability blamed on an old condition is the first sign of a fund claim.
3. Place a pending claim against June 1, 2026. Date every milestone in the file.
4. Count the deadline. Write down both dates, and take the later one.
5. Ask before you settle. The structure of the underlying settlement can decide what the fund claim is worth.

Honest odds. The bar is higher than it was in June, and the claims are slow. Some claims that would have qualified before July will not. Those that do may carry a life pension, which is why the question is worth asking even when the answer is no. A consultation with this office costs nothing, and if there is nothing worth doing, we will tell you that.

A file to keep. One folder, started this month:

• The old disability, on paper from before — Medical, claim and work records dated before the new injury.
• The new injury’s dates — The injury, and the resolution of its permanent disability, with both deadlines beside them.
• The apportionment paragraph — And the list of records the doctor reviewed.
• The case’s milestones — Any trial setting, pretrial conference statement, Declaration of Readiness and fund application, each dated.
• Every request from the Director — When it came, and what was sent back, when.
• The settlement papers — Which structure, and on what rating.
• The final determination, if there is one — Its date, and the date 30 days later.