Does gender affect car insurance rates? The states that bar it, read from the statute text

In most states your sex can still move your premium, though not in every one. Where state law allows it, an insurer can use the driver’s sex as one rating factor if its filed rating plan supports the difference with loss data. California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania bar it in official text read on 2026-10-30, and Massachusetts and Michigan bar marital status too. Montana, still on many lists, changed its law in 2021 to permit both.

Montana shows why published counts disagree. Its 1983 human rights statute barred sex and marital-status discrimination in “any type of insurance policy,” rates included, so older lists still count it. A 2021 amendment added subsection (4), which says using “accepted ratemaking methodologies based on sex or marital status” is not a violation. A list written before that change can say seven states; drop Montana and the same list says six.

Estimates and published averages, not a quote. Not insurance advice. State rules and insurer rules vary. Confirm requirements with your state insurance regulator or a licensed agent in your state.

Gender and marital status in auto rating: the state text, read 2026-10-30

The table lists the states that most often appear on a “gender ban” list, plus Texas as an example of the rule most states follow. Each row says what the official text governs, because a rule about refusing to insure someone is not the same as a rule about what an insurer can charge. A row is marked confirmed only where the rating rule was read in the statute, the state legislature’s code, or the state insurance regulator’s own publication.

Four rows carry a confirmed rating rule for gender: California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Two of those, Massachusetts and Michigan, also bar marital status in the same sentence. Montana’s current text runs the other way. Hawaii and North Carolina often appear on published lists, but their official rating text is not quoted on this page, so their rows say what the regulators’ consumer pages say and nothing more. A reader in either state can confirm the rule with one call to the state insurance department, and the questions to ask are in the last section.

The Texas row is the useful contrast. The Texas Department of Insurance says an insurer may not “turn you down or charge more because of your age, gender, marital status, geographic location, or disability unless the company can show that you’re a greater risk for a loss than other people it’s willing to insure.” That is a permission with a condition attached, and it is close to the default in states that have no specific ban: a rating difference must be supported by loss experience, or it is unfairly discriminatory.

Why published counts say six, seven or eight states

Most disagreement between lists has nothing to do with new legislation in a given year. It comes from four choices a writer makes, often without saying so. Each one can add or remove a state.

• Montana’s 2021 amendment. A list built from older sources counts Montana, because its 1983 human rights statute barred discrimination by sex or marital status in “any type of insurance policy,” including rates. The 2021 amendment added subsection (4), which says using “accepted ratemaking methodologies based on sex or marital status” is not a violation. Dropping Montana takes seven to six.
• Michigan’s 2019 reform. Michigan’s ban sits in the section the 2019 no-fault reform amended, and the same act carries July 1, 2020 deadlines for other rules. A list written from older sources, or one that ties the change to the wrong date, can leave Michigan off.
• Refusal rules counted as rating rules. Hawaii’s Insurance Division tells consumers that insurers “may not refuse to insure you on the basis of” a list that includes age, sex and marital status. Texas uses similar words with an exception. A writer who reads refusal language as a pricing ban can add states that only regulate who gets a policy.
• Gender versus gender plus marital status. Some lists answer “gender,” some answer “gender or marital status,” and some merge the two. Pennsylvania’s regulator text bars gender in rates but names marital status only in its underwriting list, so it moves between lists depending on the question asked.

So a count of eight can reflect all four choices made on the inclusive side, and a count of six reflects Montana removed with the rest kept. The table above does not pick a number. It shows four states with a confirmed rating rule for gender in the official text read on 2026-10-30, one former ban state, two states whose rating text should be confirmed with the regulator, and the reason each one sits where it does. That is a more useful answer than a total, because the total changes the moment one statute is amended.

A related split runs through the credit question. Some states that do not bar gender do bar or limit credit-based insurance scores, and the lists of those states are different again; the credit-based insurance score guide covers that rule, including Massachusetts, which bars credit in the same section that bars sex.

Michigan: what MCL 500.2111 permits, what it bars, and where July 2020 comes from

Michigan’s rule is the most specific in the table because it names factors on both sides. Subsection (2) of MCL 500.2111 says classifications for automobile insurance “must be based only on 1 or more of” a list of factors, applied uniformly across the state. For all coverages that list is: the driver’s age, length of driving experience or years licensed; driver primacy, meaning who drives which car; miles driven; type of use, such as business, farm or pleasure; vehicle characteristics, including make and model; commuting mileage; the number of cars insured or licensed operators in the household; and the amount of insurance. Personal protection insurance can add earned income, dependents, coordination of benefits and seat belt use.

That list is not fully closed. Subsection (9) says an insurer “may use factors in addition to those permitted by this section” if the plan is consistent with the purposes of the act and “reflects reasonably anticipated reductions or increases in losses or expenses.” Subsection (4) is what sets the outer limit: it lists what an insurer “shall not” use for automobile rates or rating classifications: sex, marital status, home ownership, educational level attained, occupation, the postal zone where the insured lives, and credit score, as section 2162 provides. The list of permitted factors in subsection (2) also carries a proxy rule: the number of licensed operators in a household “must not be used as an indirect measure of marital status.” That clause matters because a two-adult household is the obvious stand-in for a married couple, and Michigan closed that route in the text itself.

The section was last amended by 2019 PA 21, which the Governor approved on May 30, 2019 and which was filed and took effect on June 11, 2019. Section 2111 as amended carries no separate start date. The July 1, 2020 dates in the same act sit in section 2111f, which required insurers to file personal protection insurance rates before July 1, 2020 for policies effective after that date, and barred issuing or renewing auto policies after July 1, 2020 unless those filed rates were approved. Those are rate-filing deadlines for one coverage, not a start date for the rating-factor bans in section 2111.

Two more parts of 2111 shape what Michigan drivers see. Subsection (5) keeps territory as a rating basis even though the postal zone is barred, so where a car is garaged still counts. Subsection (6) allows a premium discount plan for drivers 65 and older and, where an insurer has none, requires reduced rates for drivers 65 and older who drive under 3,000 miles a year. The rest of Michigan’s reform, including the personal injury protection levels, is set out in the Michigan PIP choices guide, which reads the same chapter of the Insurance Code.

Montana: the 1983 rule and the 2021 subsection that reversed it for rates

Montana’s provision is in its human rights law, not its insurance code. MCA 49-2-309(1) says a financial institution or person “may not discriminate solely on the basis of sex or marital status in the issuance or operation of any type of insurance policy, plan, or coverage,” including “rates or premiums and payments or benefits.” The history line shows it was enacted in 1983 (Ch. 531) and amended in 1993 and in 2021 (Ch. 250).

The 2021 amendment added subsection (4): except as prohibited by the federal rules implementing the Affordable Care Act, “it is not a violation of the prohibition against sex or marital status discrimination in this section for a person to use accepted ratemaking methodologies based on sex or marital status in establishing insurance premium rates.” The date in that subsection, October 1, 2021, fixes which version of the federal health rules is meant; it is not phrased as the date the auto rule changed. For auto insurance, the practical reading is that sex and marital status can be used in ratemaking in Montana under the current code, subject to the same actuarial support any rating factor needs.

Montana is the clearest case of a list going stale. Its 1983 rule was one of the earliest and broadest, which is why it appears on so many older summaries. The current Montana Code Annotated (2025 edition, read on the Montana Legislature website) is the version to rely on.

Massachusetts: sex, marital status and most of age in one sentence

Massachusetts goes further than any other row in the table. Section 4(d) of chapter 175E, which sets the standards for making rates, says that for motor vehicle insurance rates, “risks shall not be grouped by sex or marital status and shall not be grouped by age except to produce the reduction in rates for insureds age sixty-five years or older required by this clause.” The same clause requires the rate for a driver 65 or older who otherwise qualifies for the lowest classification to be 25 percent less than the applicable rate.

The section also bars rates based in whole or in part on credit information for private passenger motor vehicle insurance, and requires the classification of risks to include at least fifteen territories. It requires reductions for less damageable vehicles and approved anti-theft devices, and it limits premium increases for at-fault accidents to those that meet the definitions of a minor or major accident in chapter 175.

Taken together, the Massachusetts text leaves rating to driving record, territory, the vehicle and its equipment, and a required senior reduction. That is a different design from Michigan’s closed list, though it lands in a similar place on sex and marital status. The Massachusetts benchmark page shows the state’s published NAIC averages, which describe the whole insured group in a past year and not any one driver.

California and Pennsylvania: gender only, on the text cited here

California’s rule came by regulation, not statute. The California Department of Insurance announced on January 3, 2019 that the Gender Non-Discrimination in Automobile Insurance Rating Regulation “became effective on January 1, 2019” and that it prohibits “the use of gender in private passenger automobile insurance rating.” The release says the regulation “mandates that all automobile insurance companies operating in California file a revised class plan that eliminates the use of gender as a rating factor.” The release does not mention marital status, so this page does not state a California rule on it.

Pennsylvania’s regulator text draws the underwriting and rating line in two separate sentences. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department’s Auto Insurance Guide (Rev. 10/2016) says companies may not “unfairly discriminate by using underwriting standards based on things such as race, religion, nationality, ethnic group, age, gender, family size, occupation, place of residence, and marital status.” A later sentence is narrower and is about price: “By law, insurance companies are prohibited from charging different rates based on an applicant’s race, religion, national origin, and gender.”

Marital status is in the first Pennsylvania list and not in the second. The department’s own shopping sheet tells consumers to have “all driver names, ages, and marital statuses” ready when they call an agent, which fits a reading that marital status can still be asked about and used in Pennsylvania pricing. California’s benchmark figures are on the California state page; like every NAIC figure on this site, they are published averages, not quotes.

How a rating factor moves a premium, in index numbers

The Texas Department of Insurance separates two words that are often used as one. A rate is “the cost of insurance per exposure unit,” which for auto insurance is one year of coverage on a car. A premium is what you pay, the rate applied to your units and adjusted for your characteristics. TDI’s list of common auto factors reads: claims history; where you live and how much you drive; “your age, gender, and marital status”; occupation; the cost to replace the car; and credit score. It adds that “each company’s premium formula is different.”

In a filed rating plan, most factors work as multipliers, often called relativities, applied to a base rate. The worked example below uses index numbers with a base of 100, not dollars, and every multiplier in it is assumed for illustration. None is taken from a filed plan, and none describes any insurer.

The split and the ban move the two drivers in opposite directions. In a state that allows the split, the two drivers in this class differ by the ratio of their class multipliers, 1.50 to 1.25, or 20 percent. In a state that bars it, both pay the same class multiplier, which sits between the two. On these assumptions the male driver’s index falls 7.5 percent and the female driver’s rises 11.0 percent. The direction follows from the arithmetic; the size depends entirely on the assumed multipliers and mix, and those are what an insurer’s own data would set.

Two limits of the illustration matter. First, removing one factor rarely leaves the others untouched: an insurer can give more weight to experience, miles or record when it refiles, so part of the gap can reappear through factors that are still allowed. Michigan’s proxy clause on licensed operators is a direct response to that. Second, the class multiplier applies before discounts and after coverage choices, so limits, deductibles and discounts often move a real premium more than any single driver factor. The rate filing guide shows where insurers’ filed rating plans, including their factor tables, can be read, and the guide to a high premium walks through the other factors in order.

The crash data behind the variable, by sex and age

Insurers that use sex point to their own loss data, which is not public. The closest public reading is federal crash data. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Fatality Facts 2024 on males and females, built from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and posted June 2026, reports that driver fatal crash involvements per 100 million miles driven in 2022 were 48 percent higher for males (2.8) than for females (1.9). The table shows the same IIHS figures by age band, with the ratio worked out from the published counts.

The gap is widest for drivers in their twenties, where the male rate is a little over twice the female rate, and it narrows with age until it reverses for drivers 70 and older. That pattern explains why the sex factor, where it is used, tends to matter most for young drivers and fades for middle-aged ones. The teen driver guide covers the first years, where the age and experience factors apply in every state, including the four with a confirmed gender rule.

IIHS also states the limits of the comparison. It says men typically drive more miles and are more likely to skip seat belts, speed and drive impaired, and that “differences in the types of vehicles men and women drive and the circumstances of their crashes account for much of the difference in risk.” It adds that the male and female difference in fatality risk “has diminished in newer vehicles.” Fatal crashes are a small share of claims, and claim cost turns on frequency and severity across all crash types, so this table supports the direction of an insurer’s argument, not the size of any multiplier.

Refusing a policy versus pricing one: the Texas and Hawaii wording

Underwriting decides whether an insurer accepts, refuses, renews or places a driver in a particular company within a group. Rating decides what the accepted driver pays. Many state rules address one and not the other, and this is the single largest source of overcounting.

Hawaii’s 2026 consumer publication, which carries sample premiums for rates in effect January 1, 2026, says companies “may choose the people they wish to insure” but “may not refuse to insure you on the basis of your race, creed, ethnic extraction, age, sex, length of driving experience, credit bureau rating, marital status, residence or physical handicap.” That is a refusal rule. Its sample premiums are defined by a 2024 Honda Accord LX, pleasure use, set coverage limits, and two driving records, clean and one speeding conviction; the publication’s driver profile does not state an age or a sex. That fits a market where those factors do not drive the sample, but a profile is not a statute, and the rating text should be confirmed with the Insurance Division.

Texas puts refusal and price in the same sentence with an exception, and Pennsylvania splits them into two sentences with different lists. Reading each rule for the verb it uses (refuse, renew, charge, group, classify) tells you which side of the line it is on. The quote comparison method uses the same discipline for policies: compare like with like before reading anything into a price gap.

What a ban leaves in place for a young or single driver

A gender ban does not remove age or experience from rating in most of the states in the table. Michigan’s permitted list starts with the driver’s age, length of driving experience or years licensed. California’s release concerns gender alone. Pennsylvania’s rate sentence names race, religion, national origin and gender. Only Massachusetts limits age grouping in the same clause, and even there driving record, territory and the vehicle remain.

Marital status is a separate question with a separate answer in each state. It is barred for rating in Massachusetts and Michigan by the text in the table. Pennsylvania names it only for underwriting. Texas permits it with risk support. Where it is used, a change in marital status is a rating fact to report, the same way a new address or a new driver is, and a renewal can move when it is updated.

• In a ban state, a quote that changes when only the driver’s sex is changed is worth a written question to the insurer, because the filed plan should not allow it.
• In a ban state, household composition can still be rated where the law allows it, except that Michigan bars using the number of licensed operators as an indirect measure of marital status.
• In a state without a ban, sex can be one factor among many. Its effect, if any, is set by the insurer’s filed relativities and is usually largest at young ages, which matches the crash data above.
• In any state, published averages such as the national per-month figure cover all drivers together and say nothing about the gap between men and women.

Testing the next state list you read against the source text

A list of “states that ban gender rating” is easy to check once you know where the disagreements come from. Five questions sort a reliable list from a stale one, and the same questions work when you call a state insurance department or an insurer.

1. Does it cite the statute, regulation or regulator page for each state, with a date? Without a citation and a date, a count cannot be checked.
2. Does it still count Montana? If so, it predates or misses the 2021 amendment to MCA 49-2-309, which permits sex- and marital-status-based ratemaking.
3. How does it date Michigan? The rule is in MCL 500.2111(4) as amended by 2019 PA 21, effective June 11, 2019; the act’s July 1, 2020 deadlines are in section 2111f and concern personal protection insurance rate filings.
4. Does each row describe rates, or only refusal to insure? Hawaii’s consumer wording and Texas’s exception are refusal and risk-support rules as quoted above.
5. Does it separate gender from marital status? Massachusetts and Michigan bar both; California’s release and Pennsylvania’s rate sentence address gender only.

For your own policy, the direct route is to ask the insurer, in writing, which driver characteristics its filed rating plan uses in your state, and whether sex or marital status is one of them. The answer can be checked against the filing itself. Other factor-by-factor explanations are collected under Discounts and rating factors.

Questions readers ask

To see whether sex or marital status appears in your own insurer’s rating manual, open its filed plan through the rate filing guide and search the driver class tables.