Insurers price and non-renew homes using wildfire risk scores from third-party models. In most of the country you have no right to see that score, and no way to contest it if it is wrong about your property.
In two states you do. This tracks where, what the deadlines are, and what is pending everywhere else.
Last reviewed July 25, 2026 · Corrections welcome
Four categories, not fifty
Every state falls into one of four buckets. The distinction that matters is not whether a state has "wildfire legislation," because most have something. It is whether you personally can demand a number and argue with it.
2
Formal appeal right
You get the score in writing and can contest it directly with the insurer, on a clock.
4
Disclosure only
You can demand a written reason or explanation, but there is no appeal process behind it.
6
No specific right
General insurance law applies. Nothing addresses wildfire risk scores as such.
1
Moving the other way
Law has expanded what insurers may exclude rather than what homeowners may contest.
By regulation, since October 2022. The oldest appeal right in the country, and the least known.
What exists
California Code of Regulations title 10, section 2644.9, adopted as part of the Safer From Wildfires framework. If an insurer uses a wildfire risk model to segment, differentiate, or surcharge your premium, it must give you the score in writing, tell you the range of possible scores, explain where yours falls, and identify what mitigation would move it. You may appeal that score directly to the insurer, orally or in writing, and the insurer must tell you in writing that this right exists whenever it gives you a score.
15 days to disclose after a completed application
45 days before renewal
75 days before non-renewal
10 days to acknowledge an appeal
30 days to decide it
What it does not do
It does not cap your premium and it does not require the insurer to agree with you. If your appeal is denied, the insurer must forward the appeal and its response to the Department of Insurance on request, and you can file a complaint with the Department.
Pending
SB 876, the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, passed the Senate on May 27, 2026 and is in the Assembly. It addresses claims handling after declared disasters, not risk scores, so it would not change the appeal right described above.
By statute, effective July 1, 2026. The first legislature to write the right into law rather than regulation.
What exists
HB25-1182, signed May 28, 2025. Any insurer using a wildfire risk model, catastrophe model, or other scoring method to underwrite, price, non-renew, or surcharge a homeowners policy must give the policyholder written notice at application, renewal, and non-renewal. The notice must explain the score in plain language, give the range of scores a property could be assigned, and state the effect each mitigation action could have. Policyholders and applicants may appeal the score, the classification, or a denied mitigation discount if they believe it is inaccurate and can produce evidence of the mitigation work they have done.
10 days to acknowledge an appeal
30 days to decide it
Useful detail most coverage misses
On February 10, 2026 the Division of Insurance issued Bulletin B-5.56, guidance to all property insurers on what the annual notice must contain. It ships with a model notice as Attachment A, so you can compare what your insurer actually sent you against what the Division told them to send.
Timing
The score does not arrive on a fixed date. It arrives with your next renewal paperwork after July 1, 2026.
What exists
HB 48, passed in 2025, created a statewide wildfire risk mapping tool and requires insurers to use it when determining a property's wildfire risk. The consumer-facing provision: if an insurer raises your rate by 20 percent or more, or drops your coverage because of wildfire risk, it must provide notice and justification if you request it. The same law began assessing fees in 2026 on structures inside the High Risk Wildland Urban Interface boundary to fund risk assessments.
What this means in practice
The request is the whole mechanism. Nothing happens automatically, there is no defined clock, and there is no process for contesting the justification once you have it. Utah is the clearest example of why "has wildfire legislation" and "has a homeowner right" are different questions.
OregonDisclosure only
A floor that predates the fight, a bill that died, and no sponsor for the next one.
What exists
Under current law, insurers must tell policyholders whether and how they consider property-level wildfire prevention work, such as fire-resistant siding and roofing, in underwriting and rating decisions. Note what that covers: the insurer's policy on mitigation, not your property's score. You cannot demand a number.
What failed, and how
SB 1540, sponsored by Senator Jeff Golden and modeled on the Colorado law, would have required insurers to disclose their models and scoring methods to the Department of Consumer and Business Services and detail how those tools informed underwriting. It cleared the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire unanimously, then stalled in the Senate Rules Committee without a floor vote. The legislature adjourned sine die on March 6, 2026. Late opposition from the insurance industry is the stated cause, despite bipartisan support and concessions that went past what Colorado required.
Why 2027 is uncertain
Golden said he hopes the idea returns, but 2026 was his final session before retirement. The bill currently has no obvious champion.
Separately
Oregon repealed its statewide wildfire hazard map in 2025. It is the only state on this page that has removed a risk-mapping instrument rather than added one.
TexasDisclosure only
No score right, but the non-renewal letter got better in 2025.
What exists
HB 2067, from the 2025 session, requires insurers to give policyholders and applicants a written statement explaining why a policy was declined, canceled, or non-renewed. The Department of Insurance recommended it to the legislature specifically because the previous law only required that explanation when the consumer asked for it. Underneath that, the standing rule remains that the company must give the reason on request, with 60 days' notice of non-renewal for policies bought or renewed in 2024 or later.
Worth watching
For notices effective on or after April 1, 2026, Texas carriers report declination, cancellation, and non-renewal reasons to TDI quarterly, broken out by ZIP code. That is a market-withdrawal early warning system, and it is public policy infrastructure that no other state on this page has.
What is absent
Nothing in Texas law addresses wildfire risk scores as such. The written reason you receive is the insurer's stated reason, not the model output behind it.
Notice when you are dropped. No notice at all when you are repriced.
What exists
Act 110, effective January 1, 2026, amended the notice requirements for cancellation and non-renewal of policies covering residential property, including single-family homes, multi-family dwellings, and condominium units.
The gap, and it is a large one
Hawaii insurers do not have to notify you before a rate increase takes effect at renewal. Notice requirements attach to cancellation and non-renewal, not to price. HB 254, which would require advance written notice for increases above 10 percent, was introduced in 2025 and carried into 2026 without being enacted. As of July 2026 a Hawaii homeowner can open a renewal bill substantially higher than last year's with no advance warning, no score to inspect, and nothing to appeal.
Context
The 2023 Maui wildfires drove more than $3 billion in insured losses and carriers repriced statewide afterward. Hawaii has the pressure of a wildfire state and none of the wildfire-specific consumer machinery.
The Senate keeps voting yes. One House committee is where it stops.
What was proposed
SB 5928 and its House companion HB 2277 would have required insurers to disclose wildfire risk scores when used, explain the factors behind the score, and give plain-language steps to improve it, with an appeal available where the consumer had done mitigation work since the last evaluation or could show demonstrable inaccuracies. That is close to the Colorado standard.
The pattern
SB 5928 passed the Senate 48 to 1 and did not advance out of the House Consumer Protection & Business Committee. It was not alone. In the same 2026 session, the wildfire non-renewal grant program bill passed the Senate 37 to 11 and died in that committee. The assignment-of-benefits ban passed the Senate unanimously and died in that committee. The insurance fraud modernization bill passed the Senate unanimously and died in that committee. A fifth bill, giving the Insurance Commissioner restitution authority, passed the Senate 30 to 19 and never received a hearing there.
What this means if you live in Washington
Your score is not disclosable today. The obstacle is not a lack of legislative support, which by vote count is overwhelming, and it is not the Governor. It is one committee in the House, and that is where attention would have to go for 2027.
Where things stand
Insurers declined to renew more than 6,200 New Mexico homeowners policies in 2025, the highest number ever recorded in the state and nearly triple the roughly 2,200 in 2021. Superintendent of Insurance Alice Kane presented those figures to the Legislative Finance Committee in July 2026, and the office is increasing data collection from the state's ten largest insurers to establish why.
What the state has done instead
A $10 million wildfire mitigation grant program for homeowners, and an increase in the FAIR Plan residential coverage limit from $350,000 to $750,000. Both help. Neither gives you a number to look at or a process to contest it.
If you are non-renewed here
There is no wildfire-score appeal to file. The record that matters is whatever you can show the next underwriter about the condition of the property, and the time to assemble it is before the letter arrives, not after.
NevadaMoving the other way
The only state on this page where the law expanded what insurers may withhold.
What changed
Assembly Bill 376 took effect January 1, 2026 and allows insurance companies to exclude wildfire coverage from homeowners policies. It is the first law of its kind in the country, and the intent was to keep insurers writing in Nevada rather than leaving. A companion bill that would have created a state FAIR Plan failed, so Nevada has no insurer of last resort of the kind California and New Mexico operate.
What to check
If you hold or are offered a Nevada homeowners policy, the question is no longer only what your premium is. It is whether wildfire is covered at all, and that now has to be read off the policy itself.
Arizona, Idaho, Montana, WyomingNo specific right
Significant wildland-urban interface exposure, no wildfire-score consumer machinery.
Status
No wildfire risk score disclosure requirement and no appeal right identified in any of these states. General state insurance law still applies, including whatever notice your state requires before cancellation or non-renewal, and every state has a department of insurance that accepts consumer complaints.
Honest caveat about this entry
These four are verified less deeply than the states above, which were each traced to a statute, regulation, bulletin, or legislative record. Nothing in the sources reviewed indicates a wildfire score right in any of them, but absence of evidence is weaker than a citation. If you know otherwise, the correction box below is the fastest way to fix this page.
Every other state
The remaining states are not tracked here yet. This page covers the West plus the states where wildfire scoring is actively contested. If your state should be on it, say so.
What all of this has in common
Every right on this page, in every category, ends in the same place: you have to show what condition your property is actually in. Colorado's statute says the appeal turns on evidence of the mitigation efforts you have taken. California's regulation asks what property characteristics affected the score. Utah's justification requirement, Texas's written reason, a New Mexico non-renewal with no appeal at all: in each case the only thing you control is the quality of your own record.
The catch is timing. Photos taken after the letter arrives are photos taken after the letter arrived, and a self-kept folder is a set of files you could have edited at any time. A record that establishes what your property looked like on a specific date has to have been made on that date, and be verifiable as such.
Laws change, sessions open, and I have gotten things wrong before. If something here is out of date, incomplete, or missing your state, tell me. I read all of these.