Is it law yet? No.
As of 22 August 2026, docket 26-TIRE-01 shows no Final Statement of Reasons and no submission to the Office of Administrative Law. The Commission adopted the regulations on 17 August. Until OAL review is complete and the rule is filed with the Secretary of State, it is not in effect and nothing in it is enforceable.
The OAL notice file number for this rulemaking is Z # 2026-0324-03. There is no litigation on the docket. Checked against the docket log, 22 Aug 2026.
The dates moved
This is the single most important thing that changed, and it is the reason some of the numbers in circulation do not match the rule as adopted. In its 17 July 2026 notice, the Commission described amendments
“including the delay of the proposed Phase 1 and Phase 2 implementation dates by one year and two years, respectively”
Notice of Additional Public Comment Period and Summary of Changes, TN 271526, 17 July 2026 · restated in Resolution 26-0817-09, TN 272046.
So the widely-quoted analyses of “how many tires would fail” were written against an earlier, tighter schedule. Phase 2 in particular was being discussed at a 2031 date before the two-year delay carried it to 2033. If you have seen a dramatic figure about this program, check which schedule it was measured against — ours traces to a comment written when Phase 2 was still 2031. How we traced that figure →
The Commission's own position is that the delay changes nothing analytically: it “does not have any significant impact on, or result in a change to, the conclusions reached in the Staff Report, Draft EIR, SRIA”.
The rulemaking, step by step
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 20–21 Aug 2026 | Twelve public comments filed after adoption. By their docket titles: freedom of choice, safety, consumer cost, the competition-tire definition, off-road tires, and tire sizes. | TN 272062–272134 |
| 19 Aug 2026 | Resolution 26-0817-09 docketed — certifying the Final EIR and adopting the regulations. | TN 272046 |
| 17 Aug 2026 | CEC Business Meeting. Final EIR certified, regulations adopted. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 7 Aug 2026 | Notice of Adoption Hearing posted; Final EIR published. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 3 Aug 2026 | Additional comment period closed. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 30 Jul 2026 | CalRecycle filed a letter of support, acknowledging the consultation the statute requires. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 17 Jul 2026 | Notice of Additional Public Comment Period + amended express terms. Phase 1 delayed one year, Phase 2 delayed two. Separately, an addendum clarified the Smithers wet-grip method for light-truck tires. | TN 271526 |
| 16 Jun 2026 | Formal comment period closed — 52 days. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 10 Jun 2026 | Public hearing on the proposed regulations. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 24 Apr 2026 | Notice of Proposed Action, Initial Statement of Reasons, proposed express terms, and Staff Report CEC-600-2026-012. Draft EIR sent to the Office of Planning and Research. | TN 269617 |
| 30 Sep 2024 | CEQA scoping meeting. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 11 Sep 2024 | Notice of Preparation of a Draft EIR. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 14 Feb 2023 | Pre-rulemaking workshop, with Smithers and the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association presenting. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 2 Feb 2023 | Draft staff report proposing the program. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
| 2003 | AB 844 (Nation, Ch. 645) directs the Commission to implement a Replacement Tire Efficiency Program. Codified at Public Resources Code §§25770–25773. The rule adopted in 2026 carries out a statute passed twenty-three years earlier. | Resolution 26-0817-09 |
What the Commission changed in July, section by section
When the Commission reopened comment on 17 July it published a section-by-section Summary of Changes — its own plain-English account of every amendment. That document is the clearest description of this rule that exists, and it is buried in a 70-page PDF. We are working through it in full; the changes verified so far are below, each quoted or closely paraphrased from the Commission's own summary.
| Section | What changed |
|---|---|
| §3303(b)(2) | The wet-grip test method for light-truck and commercial tires changed from ISO 23671 to ISO 15222. The Commission's reason: ISO 23671’s own scope section “states that the scope applies to passenger car tires”, while ISO 15222 uses a reference tire “sized and rated directly in the light truck tire range”. A passenger-car method was being applied to light trucks; that was fixed. |
| §3303(b), (b)(1) | New paragraphs separating wet-grip test methods for passenger car tires from those for light-truck tires. |
| §3303(f), (f)(1), (f)(2) | Treadwear testing spelled out for light-truck and commercial tires, including which inflation pressure and test-load multiplier apply when the federal rule does not specify one. |
| §3304(a)(1)(A) | Moving a tire from the approved database to the archived database became mandatory rather than permissive for staff — and a 30-day notice to the listed contact was added, where the original text said no notice would be given. The notice must also say that a new statement can be filed under §3305. |
| §3304(a)(2)(A) | Struck the language allowing archived information to be deleted after two years without notice. |
| §3303, §3303(e), (g) | Federal citation dates updated; ISO 15222:2025, ASTM F2493-2020 and ASTM F2872-25 added as documents incorporated by reference. |
One thing we cannot yet reconcile. Resolution 26-0817-09 describes the Smithers addendum as using “ISO 15222 (2021)”. The Summary of Changes for §3303(b)(2) refers to ISO 15222:2025, and lists ISO 15222:2025 among the documents incorporated by reference. We report both, attributed, and we are not guessing which is controlling. This is the second internal date discrepancy we have found in this record — the first was 9.0 versus 9.1 N/kN.
Read the source yourself
Both documents are on the CEC docket, and we keep archived copies so these citations cannot rot:
- Resolution 26-0817-09 — certifies the Final EIR and adopts the program. CEC copy · our archived copy (PDF)
- Notice of Additional Public Comment Period and Summary of Changes — contains the section-by-section summary and the amended express terms in strikethrough/underline. CEC copy · our archived copy (PDF)
- The live docket — 26-TIRE-01 filing log
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Every claim on this page is sourced to a document on the public docket, with the date we checked it. Where the record contradicts itself, we publish both readings and say so.