Progressive Unlawfully Charges Single Drivers Higher Premiums Than Married Drivers, Class Action Alleges

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Three Progressive Corporation subsidiaries face a proposed class action that claims they violated two California laws by charging higher auto insurance rates to residents who are unmarried.

The 77-page lawsuit alleges defendants Progressive West Insurance Company, United Financial Casualty Company and Progressive Select Insurance Company have unlawfully used insureds’ marital status as a rating factor when setting the rates, charges and premiums for motor vehicle liability insurance. Per the case, both the Rosenthal Auto Insurance Nondiscrimination (RAIN) Law and the Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their marital status.

The case claims the insurers’ conduct has caused insureds who are rated as “single”—including people who have never been married, are legally separated from their spouses, are divorced, are widowed or are unregistered domestic partners—to pay more for auto insurance on average than insureds who are categorized as married.

The suit explains that the California legislature amended the Unruh Act in 2005 to prohibit businesses, including insurance agencies such as the defendants, from discriminating against individuals based on their marital status. Likewise, the RAIN Law was amended in 2008 to prohibit insurers from using any characteristics listed under the Unruh Act, including marital status, as “constitut[ing] a condition or risk for which a higher rate, premium, or charge may be required of the insured for that insurance,” the complaint relays.

The lawsuit argues that even though amendments to the RAIN Law and Unruh Act prohibiting marital status discrimination have been in place for more than a decade, the defendants continue to use marital status as an optional rating factor when calculating insurance premiums in California, which has ultimately caused those who are rated as single to pay higher premiums.

According to the suit, premium quotes for California private passenger motor vehicle liability insurance obtained from Progressive between 2019 and 2021, for example, demonstrate that single insureds pay an average of $60.67 more per year than married insureds. This finding is consistent with a 2015 Consumer Federation of America article that concluded Progressive charged “unmarried” Oakland residents $60 more per year than married individuals, the case says.

The lawsuit goes on to state that the Progressive insurers’ use of marital status as a basis for determining insurance rates has a disproportionate effect on Californians who have been “historically marginalized,” such as people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. According to the suit, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that Black and Hispanic Americans marry at lower rates than white Americans, and that California had the highest number of same-sex couples living together of any state in the country in 2019. The case notes that Progressive categorizes “registered domestic partners” as married while rating “domestic partners,” a marital status traditionally reserved for same-sex couples, as single.

The three plaintiffs, two of whom have never been married and one who is divorced, claim to have been charged higher insurance premiums by the Progressive defendants than they would have paid had they been rated as “married.”

The plaintiffs look to represent all individuals who, anytime within the past three years and through the date the class is certified, paid for and were issued, were reissued, or renewed private passenger motor vehicle liability insurance policies issued by any of the defendants in California and whose policy premiums were calculated by using the “single” marital status of a “rated driver” at the time the policy was issued, reissued or renewed.

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