SB 1267 is law: Chapter 350 of 2026, effective January 1, 2027. It clarifies who pays when an owner's EV charging station in a common area causes damage, and it states the Legislature's intent that a complying association is protected from liability for a station it does not own.
Every year a few bills come out of Sacramento that read like somebody wrote them after a board meeting went badly. SB 1267 is one of those. It is about the electric vehicle charging station an owner installs in a common area, and about who pays when something goes wrong with it.
It was chaptered on September 20, 2026 as Chapter 350, and it takes effect January 1, 2027.
What the bill actually does
Existing law already requires an association to allow an owner to install an EV charging station in a common area for the owner's exclusive use, subject to requirements. That part is not new and this bill does not change it.
What is new is the liability language. The bill states the intent of the Legislature that an association which complies with those existing requirements is protected from civil liability for injuries and damages that come from a charging station the association does not own.
Read that carefully. The protection is stated for a station the association does not own. If your association owns the charger, this language is not your shield.
The cost shift
Here is the concrete change, and it is a cost shift rather than a liability change. Existing law already made the owner, and each successive owner, responsible for damage to the station, the common area, or a separate interest caused by installing, maintaining, repairing, removing, or replacing the station.
SB 1267 adds one more item to that list: use. Damage that results from using the station now follows the owner too.
That closes an obvious gap. A cable run over by a car, a conduit pulled off the wall, a stall damaged while charging. Those are use-phase events, and as of January 1, 2027 they land on the owner rather than on the association's insurance.
The installer piece
The bill also requires the installer to indemnify or reimburse the association or its members for loss or damage caused by the installation itself.
For a board, that is the useful half. It puts the obligation on the party doing the physical work, instead of leaving the association to chase an owner for damage caused by a contractor.
The part that travels with the property
Because the obligation attaches to the owner and to each successive owner, it does not disappear at closing. Buy a unit with a charger already installed in a common area parking space and you take on the obligations that came with it.
That makes it a disclosure item and a due diligence item. Sellers should expect the question and buyers should ask it.
What boards should have in writing
Two documents carry the weight here: the installation agreement between the association and the owner, and the association's rules on common area charging.
If the agreement does not address the use-phase costs, and does not carry the installer's indemnity, the association is relying on the statute alone. The statute is specific about who owes what. The agreement is what a board can point at in a dispute.
The deadline and what it is not
SB 1267 takes effect January 1, 2027, which gives a board one budget cycle to review its installation agreement before the new allocation of costs applies.
Stations already installed stay as they are. This is not a retrofit mandate and it does not require a board to remove anything.
The bottom line
SB 1267 is a quiet bill. It does not change who may install a charger and it does not change the requirements for installing one.
It changes the ledger. Liability for a station the association does not own moves off the association, damage from using the station moves onto the owner, and the installer carries the installation risk. That is worth one board meeting before January 1, 2027.
Source: California Legislative Counsel's Digest, SB 1267 (Allen), Chapter 350, Statutes of 2026. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB1267
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