California Pet Policy Disclosure Law Takes Effect April 1, 2027

California SB 1296: Landlords Must Disclose Rental Pet Policies Starting April 1, 2027

California has a new rental disclosure duty on the books and just under six months before it takes hold. The Governor approved SB 1296 on September 30, 2026, adding Section 1942.7.5 to the Civil Code. Beginning April 1, 2027, a landlord must have a written pet policy, link to it wherever the property advertises itself online, and provide a copy with every rental application form.

Information last verified on October 5, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: Chaptered September 30, 2026 as Chapter 1025, Statutes of 2026. Civil Code Section 1942.7.5 does not become operative until April 1, 2027. As of October 5, 2026 it imposes no duty on any California landlord and gives no applicant any claim.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses California Civil Code Section 1942.7.5, a statewide disclosure duty for residential rental property, and the California statutes it cross-references. It does not address local pet or rent ordinances, and it does not address federal or state law on service and assistance animals. For how other states handle rental obligations, see our state-by-state landlord-tenant guide.

What Happened

Senate Bill 1296, authored by Senator Durazo with Assembly coauthors Bryan and Haney, was approved by the Governor on September 30, 2026 and filed with the Secretary of State the same day. It became Chapter 1025 of the Statutes of 2026. The act's title describes it precisely: an act to add Section 1942.7.5 to the Civil Code, relating to tenancy.

The chapter is short. Its only numbered provision is SECTION 1, which adds the new Civil Code section. There is no second code change, no uncodified finding or declaration, and no severability or appropriation clause. We read the chaptered version in full to confirm that.

It moved as an ordinary majority-vote, non-urgency, non-fiscal measure. The Senate concurred in the Assembly's amendments on August 28, 2026 by a vote of 39 to 0, and the bill was enrolled and presented to the Governor on September 4, 2026. What the new section will require, once it operates, is set out below.

What counts as a pet, and what counts as a policy

Subdivision (a)(1) does not write its own definition of a pet. It borrows the phrase common household pet from subdivision (b) of Health and Safety Code Section 50466, which defines it as a domesticated animal, including but not limited to a dog or cat, that is commonly kept in the home for pleasure rather than for commercial purposes.

A pet addendum, under (a)(2), is a writing that forms part of a lease agreement and sets out the property's pet policy. A pet policy is defined more broadly, and this is the definition that does the most work in the statute:

“Pet policy” means any rules and conditions, including any prohibition, for maintaining pets on a residential rental property premises that is in writing. “Pet policy” shall also include policies that completely prohibit pets. If the landlord or their agent places no rules or conditions on maintaining pets, the policy shall include a statement reflecting that there are no such rules or conditions.

Cal. Civ. Code Section 1942.7.5(a)(3) (added by Stats. 2026, Ch. 1025)

There is no way to sit outside the statute by having no pet rules: a property that bans pets has a policy and must disclose the ban, and a property that imposes nothing has to say in writing that it imposes nothing.

Where the policy has to appear

Subdivision (b) sets out two obligations. The first, (b)(1), is electronic access: the landlord or agent must provide a hyperlink or other electronic means to reach the pet policy or addendum in three places, as applicable. Those are the property's internet website, under (b)(1)(A); any digital advertisement under the landlord's complete control plus any digital advertisement on a third-party website, under (b)(1)(B); and any information the landlord gives a residential rental search engine, under (b)(1)(C).

The two third-party limbs are qualified rather than absolute. For a third-party website, the duty applies only to the extent that the third party permits the inclusion of a hyperlink or other electronic access. For a rental search engine, it applies only to the extent that the engine permits or supports one. A landlord posting to a listing platform that strips outbound links is not put in an impossible position by the text.

The second obligation, (b)(2), is the one most applicants will actually notice: a written copy of the property's established pet policy or addendum must be provided with any rental application form, and electronically if the application itself is provided electronically. Subdivision (g) completes the mechanism by requiring the rental application to include a space for a prospective tenant to acknowledge receipt.

What the policy must say, and when it can change

Subdivision (d) requires the policy to include a clear, plain-language description of the rights, responsibilities and requirements for tenant pet owners at the property, including any other material rules, conditions or restrictions applicable to keeping a pet. Subdivision (d) asks for a description of rights, responsibilities and requirements, together with any other material rules, conditions or restrictions, rather than only a list of charges.

Subdivision (e) fixes the policy in time. A landlord may amend an established written pet policy or addendum for prospective tenants only, and to comply with the section must provide the policy in effect at the time the rental application form is given to the applicant. The version an applicant receives is the version that governs the disclosure, not a later revision.

Where a landlord gets slack

Two subdivisions soften the duty. Subdivision (f) is a substantial-compliance rule: a landlord substantially complies by providing a prospective applicant with the material terms of the policy, and a nonmaterial error or omission that is corrected upon notice does not constitute a violation of the section. That puts the weight of any dispute on whether a missing term was material.

Subdivision (c) is a third-party safe harbor. A landlord is not liable for an omission, error or failure to display the policy on a third-party website or platform if that third party obtained, scraped or republished information from the property's own website or digital advertisements without the landlord's express written permission.

The application fee refund

Subdivision (h) is the section's only express consumer remedy, and its conditions are cumulative. It applies where a landlord or agent charges an application fee under Civil Code Section 1950.6, fails to disclose the established pet policy or addendum before charging that fee, and, because of that failure, the applicant either is no longer eligible to rent the unit or declines to proceed with the application.

Where all of that holds, the applicant may request a refund of the application fee by written notice to the landlord or agent. The landlord must provide the refund within seven business days after receiving that written notice, and on timely refund has no further obligations to the applicant under the section.

Two features are easy to miss. The request has to be in writing, and the trigger is causal rather than merely sequential, because the nondisclosure must be the reason the applicant withdrew or lost eligibility.

Refusing to sign a pet addendum

Subdivision (i)(1) provides that a tenant's failure to sign a pet addendum shall not form the sole basis of any unlawful detainer action against the tenant. The two paragraphs that follow confine that protection rather than extend it.

Paragraph (i)(2) states that nothing in the subdivision is intended to enlarge or diminish a landlord's ability to enforce a violation of a material breach of the lease as a basis for unlawful detainer. Paragraph (i)(3) states that nothing in the subdivision prohibits a landlord from requiring execution of a pet addendum as a condition of approving a tenant's request to keep a pet on the premises. Read together, an unsigned addendum cannot stand alone as the ground for an eviction case, a material lease breach still can, and a landlord may still make signing the addendum the price of permission to keep the animal.

What the Law Actually Says

The new section is a disclosure graft onto an existing body of California rental law, and it only makes sense next to the statutes it touches.

The fee in subdivision (h) is not a new charge. Civil Code Section 1950.6 already governs the application screening fee: it may not exceed the actual out-of-pocket costs of gathering information about the applicant, including the cost of a tenant screening or consumer credit reporting service and the reasonable value of the landlord's time, and the statute caps it at thirty dollars per applicant, a figure the section allows the landlord to adjust annually in line with the Consumer Price Index from January 1, 1998. Section 1950.6 also requires an itemized receipt and already carries its own refund mechanics in subdivision (c)(2) for applications that are never considered or applicants who are not selected. Section 1942.7.5(h) adds one more route to a refund, keyed to nondisclosure, on top of those. Readers working through California's broader application and deposit rules will find the surrounding framework in our guide to the California landlord-tenant rules.

The Legislative Counsel's Digest frames the new section against one existing pet provision in particular: Civil Code Section 1942.7, which bars a landlord who allows animals from advertising or setting rental policies that require a tenant or applicant to have an animal declawed or devocalized as a condition of occupancy. That statute is enforced by a city attorney, district attorney or other law enforcement prosecutorial entity, which may sue for declaratory or injunctive relief and recover civil penalties of up to one thousand dollars per advertisement or per animal. Section 1942.7.5 contains no comparable penalty or enforcement provision.

The borrowed definition deserves one caution. Health and Safety Code Section 50466 is not a general pet statute: its substantive provisions require housing developments financed on or after January 1, 2018 under that division to authorize residents to keep one or more common household pets, and require developments financed on or after January 1, 2023 under that division or with department money, along with developments receiving certain low-income housing tax credits, to do the same subject to other reasonable conditions, a term that for that later group excludes a breed prohibition or a weight limit. Section 1942.7.5(a)(1) takes only the definition in subdivision (b) of that section. It does not import the pet-allowance mandate or the breed and weight rules that apply to state-financed developments.

Finally, on timing. SB 1296 was enacted at a regular session and carries no urgency clause, so under Article IV, Section 8(c)(1) of the California Constitution the statute goes into effect on January 1 next following a 90-day period from enactment, which is January 1, 2027. Subdivision (m) then delays the section's operation to April 1, 2027. Effective and operative are different things in California drafting, and here they are three months apart. The duties begin on the later date.

The disclosure push is not isolated. California has been legislating around what a rental listing has to show a prospective tenant, including a 2026 measure on altered rental listing photos, and other West Coast jurisdictions have gone at the adjacent problem of rental charges directly, as Seattle's rental junk-fee ban shows.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

Section 1942.7.5 is an information-symmetry statute wearing the clothes of a pet law. The problem it addresses is not whether a renter may keep a cat; it is that pet terms have historically surfaced late, often after the applicant has paid a screening fee and sometimes after a lease is signed. Subdivisions (b)(2) and (g) move that disclosure to the front of the transaction and create a signed record that it happened.

The compliance burden is deliberately light. Subdivision (j) excuses a landlord from building a website or advertising digitally at all, the third-party limbs of (b)(1) apply only so far as the platform cooperates, and (c) shields a landlord from a scraper's errors. The affirmative duty that actually bites is the one that costs nothing: write the policy down, including a policy of no restrictions, and attach it to the application.

The enforcement architecture is thinner than the duty. The section states one remedy, the (h) refund of an application fee, and surrounds it with conditions: the nondisclosure must cause the applicant to drop out or lose eligibility, the demand must be written, and a refund inside seven business days ends the landlord's obligations under the section. Subdivision (f) then treats nonmaterial errors corrected on notice as no violation at all. The statute is silent on civil penalties, attorney fees and any cause of action to enforce the refund, and it creates no remedy beyond that refund, and it does not say how the disclosure duty interacts with other remedial statutes. We are not going to guess how courts will fill that silence; the point for now is that the text does not fill it.

Two provisions are easy to over-read. Subdivision (i)(1) looks like eviction protection and is narrower than it looks, because (i)(2) leaves material-breach unlawful detainer untouched and (i)(3) lets a landlord condition pet permission on signing the addendum. And the whole section is easy to mistake for a pet-friendly-housing mandate. It is the opposite in form: a landlord who bans pets complies by saying so clearly, early and in writing.

How This Affects You

Nothing in this section asks anyone to do anything before April 1, 2027. A rental application handed over in October 2026 is governed by the law as it stood before this chapter, and an applicant who receives no pet policy today has no claim under Section 1942.7.5.

For applications provided on or after the operative date, the practical change for renters is that the pet terms should arrive with the application rather than later, and the application form should have a line acknowledging that they did. A written pet policy that states a flat prohibition is a complying policy, so receiving one is not a signal that pets are negotiable.

For landlords, agents and property managers in California, the work that the section creates is drafting: a written policy covering tenant pet owners' rights, responsibilities and requirements in plain language, including other material conditions, plus a link wherever the property advertises itself online and a copy stapled to the application. Because subdivision (e) runs amendments prospectively and ties compliance to the policy in effect when the application form is provided, version control on that document matters more than it sounds.

None of the above is advice about any particular lease, application or dispute. Whether an omission was material under subdivision (f), or whether a nondisclosure caused a particular applicant to withdraw under subdivision (h), are fact questions, and and we found no published decision construing the section as of October 5, 2026, which is unsurprising for a section that is not yet operative.

What SB 1296 Does Not Do

Subdivision (j) is explicit that the section does not require a landlord or agent to allow pets on a residential rental property, to create an internet website for a property, or to digitally advertise a rental unit through any particular medium. Subdivision (l) adds that nothing in the section limits a landlord's authority, consistent with other applicable law, to adopt, amend, interpret or enforce a written pet policy or addendum, or to deny or restrict pets based on that policy, lease terms, health or safety concerns, property conditions, insurance requirements or business reasons.

Beyond those two savings clauses, the section is silent on several things readers may expect to find in a pet law. It does not address pet rent, pet deposits or pet fees. It does not cap or regulate breed or weight restrictions. It does not create a registry, a filing requirement or an agency enforcement role, and it says nothing about local ordinances or preemption. We read the full chaptered text to confirm those absences rather than infer them.

Service, Support and Assistance Animals Are Governed by Other Law

Readers will reasonably assume a statute about animals in rental housing covers assistance animals. This one does not. Subdivision (k) provides that the section does not alter, limit, expand or affect any obligation or right under state or federal law relating to service animals, support animals or other assistance animals, and the Legislative Counsel's Digest says the same.

That matters in both directions. A clearly disclosed pet ban is still a pet ban and nothing more: it does not resolve a request involving a service or assistance animal, which runs on separate disability and fair-housing authority that this chapter left untouched. Those laws exist independently of this one, and Health and Safety Code Section 50466 itself gestures at them when it says it does not limit other statutes requiring reasonable accommodations for an individual with a disability who maintains an animal to provide assistance, service or support. This article does not set out what those obligations require; it only records that Section 1942.7.5 does not change them.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers California state law and reflects sources verified on October 5, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• California landlord-tenant laws, state by state detail
• Our landlord-tenant law hub for all 50 states
• California's 2026 law on altered rental listing photos
• Seattle's ban on rental junk fees

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Last updated: 2026-10-05. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-05.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this California pet policy law apply right now?

No. Subdivision (m) of Civil Code Section 1942.7.5 states that the section becomes operative on April 1, 2027. As of October 5, 2026 it imposes no duty on any landlord and gives no applicant any remedy, even though the bill was chaptered on September 30, 2026.

Does SB 1296 give California tenants a right to keep a pet?

No. It is a disclosure law. Subdivision (j) says the section does not require a landlord to allow pets, and subdivision (l) preserves a landlord's authority to deny or restrict pets under a written policy, lease terms, health or safety concerns, property conditions, insurance requirements or business reasons. A policy that completely prohibits pets is a pet policy under subdivision (a)(3) and complies as long as it is disclosed.

What animals count as pets under the new section?

Subdivision (a)(1) uses the definition of common household pet in subdivision (b) of Health and Safety Code Section 50466: a domesticated animal, including but not limited to a dog or cat, that is commonly kept in the home for pleasure rather than for commercial purposes.

Will landlords have to build a website to comply?

No. Subdivision (j) states that the section does not require a landlord or agent to create an internet website for a rental property or to advertise digitally through any particular medium. The electronic-access duty in subdivision (b)(1) applies to the channels a landlord actually uses, and the third-party and search-engine limbs apply only so far as that third party or engine permits a hyperlink or other electronic access.

What if a listing site shows the wrong pet terms?

Subdivision (c) says a landlord or agent is not liable for an omission, error or failure to display the written pet policy or addendum on a third-party website or platform where that third party obtained, scraped or republished the information from the property's own website or digital advertisements without the landlord's express written permission.

Can an applicant get an application fee back if the pet policy was never disclosed?

Under subdivision (h), beginning April 1, 2027, only if several conditions line up: the landlord charged an application fee under Civil Code Section 1950.6, failed to disclose the established pet policy or addendum before charging it, and because of that failure the applicant is no longer eligible to rent the unit or declines to proceed. The applicant must then request the refund by written notice, and the landlord has seven business days after receiving that notice to pay it. On a timely refund the landlord has no further obligations to the applicant under the section.

Can a tenant be evicted for refusing to sign a pet addendum?

Subdivision (i)(1) provides that a tenant's failure to sign a pet addendum shall not form the sole basis of any unlawful detainer action. Subdivision (i)(2) leaves a landlord's ability to pursue unlawful detainer for a material breach of the lease unchanged, and subdivision (i)(3) allows a landlord to require execution of a pet addendum as a condition of approving a request to keep a pet. The protection is against the unsigned addendum standing alone as the ground for the case.

Does this change anything for a service animal or an emotional support animal?

No. Subdivision (k) states that the section does not alter, limit, expand or affect any obligation or right under state or federal law relating to service animals, support animals or other assistance animals. Those obligations come from separate disability and fair-housing law that this chapter did not touch, and a disclosed pet ban does not answer a request involving an assistance animal.

What is the penalty if a landlord does not comply after April 1, 2027?

The section states one express remedy, the application fee refund in subdivision (h), and subdivision (f) provides that a nonmaterial error or omission corrected upon notice is not a violation. The text does not set out civil penalties, attorney fees, an agency enforcement role or any cause of action to enforce the refund. By contrast, the neighboring declawing and devocalizing statute, Civil Code Section 1942.7, expressly authorizes prosecutors to sue and recover civil penalties of up to one thousand dollars. How the silence in Section 1942.7.5 plays out is unsettled as of October 5, 2026.

Does the section apply to current tenants or only to new applicants?

The disclosure duties are keyed to advertising and to the rental application: subdivision (b)(1) covers the property website, digital advertising and search-engine information, and subdivision (b)(2) covers the written copy that goes out with any rental application form. Subdivision (e) allows amendments for prospective tenants only and requires the landlord to provide the policy in effect when the application form is given. The one provision that speaks to a sitting tenant is the unlawful detainer limit in subdivision (i).