California SB 435: the RCFE backup-power bill that didn't pass — and what the law already requires

This article was first published on August 10, 2026 under the headline "California SB 435: what the new backup-power law means for assisted living." That was wrong. SB 435 was a bill, not a law: when this article was published it was still pending in the Assembly, and on August 13, 2026 it was held in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. It did not pass.

Thank you to the reader who wrote in to correct us. We have rewritten this article, removed the compliance deadlines the original presented as settled, and corrected the same claim everywhere else it appeared on this site.

As introduced by Senator Aisha Wahab in February 2025, SB 435 ("Residential care facilities for the elderly: emergency backup power source") would have required RCFEs licensed for 16 or more residents to have an alternative source of power capable of protecting residents' health and safety for no fewer than 72 hours during any type of power outage. It allowed either a generator or batteries — including batteries paired with on-site renewable generation — each with its own conditions.

The bill passed the Senate 39–0 on June 4, 2025 and moved to the Assembly, where it was placed on the Appropriations Committee's suspense file on August 5, 2026. At the August 13 suspense hearing it was held in committee. The session's deadline for passing bills was August 31, so SB 435 is dead for the 2025–26 session. A future bill could revive the idea.

The 72-hour standard that does apply to RCFEs is already in statute. Health and Safety Code §1569.695, as amended by AB 3098 (effective January 1, 2019) and most recently by SB 582 (Chapter 546, Statutes of 2025), requires every RCFE's emergency and disaster plan to provide for the facility "to be self-reliant for a period of not less than 72 hours immediately following any emergency or disaster, including, but not limited to, a short-term or long-term power failure."

The same section requires training on the plan for each staff member at hire and annually, and "a drill at least quarterly for each shift." It applies to every licensed RCFE, regardless of size. On power it is a planning requirement: the statute names no generator and no battery, so a plan claiming 72 hours of self-reliance through an outage has to say how the facility gets there. On evacuation it is not a planning requirement at all — subdivision (f)(1) of the same section requires "an evacuation chair at each stairwell," and has since July 1, 2019.

An outage is when evacuation gets hardest: elevators stop, automatic doors may not open, and moving residents who can't self-evacuate becomes a stairwell problem. During the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the evacuation of Villa Capri assisted living in Santa Rosa was hampered by exactly that — doors that wouldn't open and elevators that weren't running.

For an operator, the practical move doesn't depend on SB 435. Size backup power to the critical loads your 72-hour plan depends on — oxygen, refrigerated medications, lighting, call systems — and pair it with a documented way to move non-ambulatory residents, staff trained to do it, and drill records for every shift.

Bills held on suspense can come back in a later session, usually under a new bill number. If backup-power legislation for RCFEs is reintroduced, we'll update this page with the bill number and its official status — and link to the legislative record rather than summarize it.

In the meantime, the rules already on the books are the ones being enforced. We publish a ranking of every section cited in California RCFEs, built from CDSS's own licensing export, so you can see which ones analysts are writing up right now rather than which ones might change.

See what California is actually citing →