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AB 843 Is Dead: What Actually Governs Interpreter Access at Your California SNF

Aina Malkonian . MHA | RCFE profile photo
Aina Malkonian . MHA | RCFELead - Long Term Care
ComplianceAI in Care
A nursing staff member reviewing information with a resident, representing interpreter-assisted communication in a California skilled nursing facility

Current as of July 31, 2026. Next check-in: January 2027 — sooner if AB 843’s file-strike gets revisited or a new interpreter-access bill shows up in the 2027 session.

Here’s the short version: AB 843 is dead. Governor Newsom vetoed it on October 1, 2025, the Legislature never voted to override, and the bill was formally stricken from the Assembly file on January 22, 2026. But here’s the part that actually matters for your facility: AB 843 was never going to bind you directly, even if it had been signed. It only ever amended statute governing health plans and insurers — the DMHC/CDI side of the world, not the facility side. So its death changes nothing for you. What does bind you is federal law: Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which covers your SNF directly because you’re a Medicare/Medicaid-certified provider. It requires "meaningful access" for residents with limited English proficiency (LEP), including an annual notice — in the 15 languages most common among LEP Californians — that language assistance is available. That obligation was never tied to AB 843’s fate. It’s been sitting there the whole time.

Why This Matters Now

California nursing homes have one of the highest concentrations of residents with limited English proficiency in the country. A peer-reviewed PMC study found that 14.4% of California nursing home residents had limited English proficiency and needed interpreter services during its 2020–2023 study window — most states reported under 1%. Add in that 32% of California nursing-home residents speak a language other than English at all, and this stops looking like a corner-case compliance question. Zoom out to the broader Medicare population and a UCLA Center for Health Policy Research analysis puts California’s LEP rate at 15% of Medicare beneficiaries — nearly three times the 5% national average.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report on May 18, 2026, following a unanimous bipartisan vote that February, putting a number on the national problem: 26 million Americans are LEP. The report calls out "the use of untrained interpreters, including family members or children" as a recurring failure point in high-stakes settings like healthcare — places where getting the language wrong isn’t just embarrassing, it’s a liability and safety problem. And in that same window, nobody in long-term care trade press was writing about AB 843’s actual fate. We checked Skilled Nursing News, McKnight’s, LeadingAge, and CAHF — nothing on the veto, nothing on the January file-strike. The myth that AB 843 either passed, or would have bound your facility directly, has had nobody correcting it.

Did AB 843 Ever Apply to Your Facility?

Short answer: no. And that’s the detail that keeps getting lost every time this bill comes up.

AB 843, from the 2025–2026 session, was introduced by Assembly member Robert Garcia and would have amended the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act and the Insurance Code to make health plans and insurers: offer a qualified interpreter or translator whenever one’s needed, stop pushing LEP enrollees to bring or pay for their own interpreter, post language-assistance notices more visibly, and report their language-access policies to DMHC or CDI.

Read that list again. Every obligation lands on the plan or the insurer — not on a skilled nursing facility, and not on an RCFE. AB 843 was never a facility-level mandate. It couldn’t have been, even if Newsom had signed it.

So the accurate version of this myth-correction isn’t "the law that would have applied to you didn’t pass." It’s: AB 843 never applied to you directly, and it’s dead anyway.

What Actually Happened to AB 843?

Here’s the timeline, and none of it is up for debate — this is settled procedural history, not a prediction:

  • June 4, 2025 — AB 843 passes the Assembly.
  • October 1, 2025 — Governor Newsom vetoes it.
  • Within 60 days (Joint Rule 58.5) — the Legislature gets a shot at overriding the veto. It doesn’t take one.
  • January 22, 2026 — "consideration of the Governor’s veto" gets formally stricken from the Assembly file, per LegiScan and CalMatters Digital Democracy’s bill tracking. That’s not a second veto, and it’s not new legislative action — it’s the paperwork confirming no override vote ever happened.

AB 843 is dead. Full stop. Nothing about that is still in motion.

What Already Governs Interpreter Access in California Today?

AB 843 dying doesn’t create a gap — it was never filling one. California’s plan-side interpreter-access rules have existed since 2003, and they don’t care what happened to AB 843:

  • SB 853, the Health Care Language Assistance Act, told DMHC and CDI to write language-assistance rules for plans and insurers.
  • Title 28 CCR §1300.67.04, in force since 2009, requires plans to translate "vital documents" into threshold languages and make interpretation available everywhere a member touches the plan.
  • SB 223, from 2017, layered on disclosure requirements — plans have to post the 15 most common LEP languages in specified notices.

None of this touches your facility directly. It binds the plan or the insurer, not the provider. On the facility side, California’s Title 22 CCR §72527 requires you to communicate residents’ rights "in a manner appropriate for the resident’s ability" to understand — but that’s it. Nothing in this research turned up a Title 22 provision requiring a certified interpreter specifically, beyond that general language. We’re saying that plainly instead of implying a facility mandate we can’t back up.

What Does Section 1557 Actually Require of Your SNF?

This is the section to actually build your compliance posture around. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act covers your facility directly if you’re a Medicare/Medicaid-certified provider — because that certification makes you a recipient of federal financial assistance, and that’s the trigger. Nothing AB 843 ever touched comes close to being this directly binding.

Here’s what it actually requires: HHS’s 2024 final rule brought back an annual Notice of Availability requirement, effective July 5, 2025. If you’re a covered entity — and a Medicare/Medicaid-certified SNF is one — you have to tell participants, beneficiaries, enrollees, applicants, and the public, in English and in the 15 most common LEP languages in California, that free language assistance and auxiliary aids are available. That’s not optional, and it’s not new — it’s been the rule for over a year.

One thing worth untangling so it doesn’t get mixed up with the language-access piece: a Mississippi federal court permanently vacated the parts of the 2024 rule that defined sex discrimination to include gender identity, and HHS confirmed those provisions are void via a June 2026 Federal Register notice. That ruling is narrow. It didn’t touch the Notice of Availability requirement, or anything else about language access — those provisions are all still fully in force. If you’ve heard "the Section 1557 rule got struck down" as a reason to stop worrying about interpreter access, that’s mixing up two unrelated parts of the same rule.

Can AI Translation Satisfy Section 1557 on Its Own?

Not for anything rights-critical. HHS OCR’s own guidance is blunt about this: unreviewed machine translation doesn’t satisfy Section 1557 when the material is rights-critical, when accuracy actually matters, or when the source text is complex or technical. A qualified human translator has to review it. That’s not us being cautious — that’s the agency’s own position.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights backs this up from the civil-rights side. Its May 2026 report flags "the use of untrained interpreters, including family members or children" as a recurring problem, and says certified professional interpreters are the standard for high-stakes environments like clinical care and health-insurance interactions. (Worth noting: USCCR is an advisory civil-rights commission, not an enforcement agency — treat its findings as USCCR’s position, not binding rule.)

In practice, language-services vendors already build around this. AMN Healthcare and Piedmont Global, among others, position AI and video-remote-interpreting hybrids as backup for certified interpreters — not a replacement for them in anything clinically consequential. That’s vendor practice, not law, but it points the same direction as OCR guidance and the USCCR report: a structured, accountable interpretation workflow beats an ad hoc one, whether the ad hoc option is grabbing a bilingual aide or pasting something into a translation app. This is exactly where Relic Care’s Language Services is built to sit — a compliance-supporting layer around interpreter use and documentation, not a stand-in for a certified interpreter.

Does This Apply to My Facility? A Quick Decision Guide

The same logic as the decision-tree graphic below, spelled out step by step:

Decision-tree infographic titled "Does Section 1557 Apply to Your Facility?" walking through Medicare/Medicaid certification status, covered-entity status, informal interpreter use, and AI translation use
  1. Are you a Medicare/Medicaid-certified provider? True of nearly every licensed SNF. If yes, Section 1557 covers you directly — you need that annual Notice of Availability in the top 15 LEP languages for California, and "meaningful access" for LEP residents at every point of contact. AB 843’s death changes none of this.
  2. Not sure if you’re a covered entity? This comes up for some RCFEs that aren’t Medicare/Medicaid-certified. Get your federal-funding status confirmed with counsel — coverage can flow from other sources too. Either way, Title 22 CCR §72527’s general communication-accommodation rule still applies to you regardless.
  3. Leaning on a bilingual staffer or a family member to interpret informally? Stop. USCCR’s May 2026 findings flag exactly this as the wrong standard for high-stakes clinical conversations. Build toward a certified-interpreter workflow instead.
  4. Using AI or machine translation for anything rights-critical? It needs a qualified human reviewing it, per OCR guidance. It can’t carry that weight alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AB 843 the reason my SNF needs an interpreter-access policy?

No. AB 843 would only ever have touched plan- and insurer-side statute — never facility-level rules. Whatever obligation your SNF has today comes from Section 1557, and it was there before AB 843 was ever introduced.

What law actually requires interpreter access at my facility?

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. It covers your SNF directly as a Medicare/Medicaid-certified recipient of federal funding, and it’s required "meaningful access" for LEP residents — including that annual Notice of Availability in California’s top 15 LEP languages — since July 5, 2025.

Does this apply the same way to RCFEs?

Depends on your funding status. A lot of RCFEs aren’t Medicare/Medicaid-certified, so direct Section 1557 coverage isn’t automatic the way it is for a licensed SNF. But coverage can still come from other federal funding sources. If you run an RCFE, get your specific status confirmed with counsel rather than assuming either way — California’s general Title 22 communication rules apply to you regardless.

Can I just use an AI translation tool instead of a certified interpreter?

Not on its own — not for anything rights-critical, accuracy-essential, or complex. HHS OCR guidance requires a qualified human translator to review machine-translated output in those cases. AI can support the workflow — triage, documentation, first response — but right now, it’s a supplement, not a substitute.

When should I re-check this?

January 2027 — sooner if the Legislature revisits interpreter-access legislation, OCR issues new Section 1557 guidance, or a new case moves the rule. This stuff decays. Treat the "current as of" date at the top as a real expiration warning, not decoration.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only — it’s not legal advice. Interpreter-access obligations depend on your facility’s specific certification and funding status, and the rules can change. Confirm your specific obligations with qualified counsel or your state provider association before acting on anything here.

Sources

How Relic Care Helps

If you’re building out — or auditing — your facility’s interpreter-access workflow, Relic Care’s Language Services is designed to sit around certified interpretation, not replace it. It keeps the documentation trail you need for the day a surveyor asks how you handled a specific LEP resident interaction. It runs alongside Notes Scribing and Compliance, so Notice-of-Availability records, interpreter usage, and communication accommodations all live in one auditable place. See how Relic Care approaches AI in long-term care — or reach out and we’ll walk through what this looks like for your facility specifically.

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