California Enacts SB 503, Requiring Bias-Risk Controls for Clinical Decision Support Systems

Senate Bill 503 (Weber Pierson) was approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State on September 30, 2026 as Chapter 857, Statutes of 2026, adding Business and Professions Code Section 22758. Developers and deployers of clinical decision support systems must make reasonable efforts to identify systems with a known or reasonably foreseeable risk of biased impacts in health programs or activities. Developers must make reasonable efforts to mitigate that risk and give deployers a statement of intended uses and risks plus documentation on training data, performance evaluation, data governance, and recommended monitoring; deployers, defined as health facilities, clinics, physician's offices, and group practices, must regularly monitor those systems and take reasonable and proportionate mitigation steps. Compliance is not a defense to a discrimination claim. It carries no urgency clause or special operative date, so it takes effect January 1, 2027 under California's default rule for statutes enacted in a regular session. Chaptered text retrieved 2026-10-12.

Source: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov