SB 1386 California Senate · 2025-2026 Regular Session

Administrative adjudication: governing procedure.

Summary

Existing law, the Administrative Procedure Act, governs the conduct of administrative adjudication and rulemaking proceedings of state agencies. Existing law sets forth the requirements for the governing procedure by which an agency conducts an adjudicative proceeding. Among those requirements, existing law requires an agency to designate and index a decision as precedent, as specified, in order for the decision to be relied on as precedent. This bill would make a nonsubstantive change to that requirement.

Bill status in committee 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Feb 2026

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Feb 20, 2026 Last action Mar 4, 2026

Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

02/20/26 - Introduced → SB1386 · 1 edit

MINOR

SB 1386 makes a single textual change to Section 11425.10(a)(7) of the Government Code, changing permissive language ('may be relied on as precedent') to prohibitive language ('shall not be relied on as precedent') regarding whether an agency adjudicative decision can serve as precedent without being designated and indexed by the agency. The legislative counsel's digest characterizes this as a nonsubstantive clarification, indicating the intent was always that undesignated decisions should not carry precedential weight. All other differences in the diff are formatting changes from the original legislative document layout to a web-based bill text format.

TECHNICAL

Section 11425.10(a)(7) changes from 'A decision may be relied on as precedent unless the agency designates and indexes the decision' to 'A decision shall not be relied on as precedent unless the agency designates and indexes the decision.' This shifts the language from permissive to prohibitive, clarifying that undesignated decisions cannot be used as precedent. The legislative counsel's digest labels this a nonsubstantive change, suggesting it corrects ambiguous drafting rather than altering policy.

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Full legislative history

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Key actions

Committee

Mar 4, 2026

Committee

Referred to Com. on RLS.

upper

Feb 20, 2026

Introduced

Introduced. To Com. on RLS. for assignment. To print.

upper

1 primary · 0 co-sponsors