What SB 171 actually changed in July 2026

One bill did two large things at once: it rewrote the Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund retroactively, and it made Labor Code § 5909's transmittal trigger permanent — twelve days after the old version's sunset had already passed. Most published material in California still describes the law SB 171 replaced. This is what the chaptered text says.

The § 5909 whiplash, in order

§ 5909 deems a petition for reconsideration denied unless the Appeals Board acts within 60 days. The question that moved three times is when those 60 days start:

July 2, 2024 — AB 171 (Stats. 2024, ch. 52) moved the trigger to the date a trial judge transmits the case to the Board, with a built-in sunset: the change was written to expire on July 1, 2026 and hand the clock back to the date of filing.

July 1, 2026 — the sunset date arrived. SB 171 had not yet been chaptered, and a great deal of published material announced the reversion to the filing trigger.

July 13, 2026 — SB 171 (Stats. 2026, ch. 83) deleted the sunset and repealed the filing-trigger version. Transmittal is now permanent.

We had this backwards until we re-read the chaptered bill, and we have logged that correction. Because SB 171 was chaptered after July 1, whether the filing trigger governed a petition acted on inside that twelve-day window is an open question — and one worth an attorney's attention on the specific dates in a file. Our correction.

The SIBTF rewrite

The same bill rewrote SIBTF — retroactively, with a June 1, 2026 grandfather snapshot. SIBTF pays workers who had a pre-existing disability and then suffered an industrial injury that, combined, produces a substantially greater disability. It is paid by a state fund, not by the employer — genuinely additional money, and chronically under-claimed.

Every SIBTF page written before July 2026 describes a system that no longer exists. What changed and what it means. · If you had a claim before.