The biggest structural change to California workers’ comp this year landed with a budget trailer bill: SB 171 (Stats. 2026, ch. 83), effective July 13, 2026, rewrote the Subsequent Injuries Benefits Trust Fund. The 70% combined-disability floor survives, but nearly everything around it moved.
Amended §4751 restates both entry doors as whole person impairment percentages “considered alone, after apportionment”: 35% for the standalone door, 5% where a prior hand, arm, foot, leg, or eye disability pairs with a new injury to the opposite member. The old formulation — the subsequent injury’s rating “without regard to, or adjustment for, the occupation or the age of the employee” — is gone. Two new bars: a worker whose industrial injury alone is 100% cannot collect SIBTF on top, and a worker paid a 100%-combined SIBTF award cannot apply again.
New §4754.1 requires preexisting permanent disability to be proven by evidence in existence at the time of the subsequent injury — and says outright that a retroactive prophylactic work restriction cannot establish it. Medical-legal evidence generally must come from the underlying claim’s evaluation, new med-legal cannot relitigate the underlying injury, and vocational reports obtained solely for the SIBTF proceeding are inadmissible with non-reimbursable costs.
New §4754.2 sets the first hard SIBTF deadline: the application is due five years from the subsequent injury or six months from resolution of permanent disability in the underlying case (C&R, stipulations, or findings and award), whichever is later — and §3202’s liberal-construction rule expressly cannot extend it. In the other direction, once SIBTF liability is finally determined, payments must begin within 30 days.
What it means in practice: SIBTF eligibility now reads straight off the rating file — the WPI numbers in the string, after apportionment — and the filing clock starts sprinting the moment PD resolves. Full framework, current to the new law: the SIBTF guide · price the standalone injury.
Plain-language summary for informational use; not legal advice. Figures are quoted from the cited sources.