Research cutoff: 9 September 2026. Bounded instrument review following the whole-case review in forest-reviews.md. No canonical case changes. All obligations below describe the enrolled bill if enacted, not obligations already established by this bill.
The advertised instrument is California SB 813 (McNerney), 2025–26 session. The official record shows passage by both houses on 30 August 2026 and enrollment on 1 September. As inspected on 9 September, its status is “Active Bill – Passed”; no governor approval or chapter entry appears. The senator’s 30 August release says it proceeds to the governor. The evidence supports passed/enrolled, pending enactment in the inspected record, rather than signed law. [Official status](http[local research file] [history](http[local research file] [author’s passage announcement](http[local research file]
The enrolled text creates a Government Operations Agency (GovOps) framework to qualify independent verification organizations (IVOs). It expressly does not require a developer, deployer or operator to engage an IVO or obtain a covered audit as a condition of developing, deploying or operating AI in California (§8898.4(a)(3)). A qualified evaluator is not a state endorsement of an AI model or system. The bill neither appoints Fathom nor makes an IVO a universal permission gate. [Enrolled text, §§8898–8898.4](http[local research file]
| Owner or participant | Enrolled power or obligation | Limit and exact locator |
|---|---|---|
| GovOps | By 1 January 2028, establish application requirements, qualification criteria and procedures for suspending or terminating IVO designation. Publish requirements and criteria; review and revise them. | §§8898.1(a)–(d), (f). The bill supplies considerations rather than a named vendor or fixed numerical certification benchmark. Actual implementing criteria remain future records. |
| GovOps selecting evaluators | Consider risk-assessment expertise, metrics and methods, technical staffing, financial conflicts and operational independence. Applicants supply qualifications, proposed methods and supporting documentation. | §8898.1(a), (c). An AI auditor may be a person, partnership, academic institution, nonprofit or corporation (§8898 definitions); the designation route is not limited to nonprofits. |
| GovOps supervising evaluators | Develop suspension/termination procedures considering standards failures, material misrepresentation, conflicts, missing documentation, integrity/objectivity/competence and cybersecurity lapses. | §8898.1(b). This concerns evaluator designation. The final text does not reproduce the old model-certification/decertification system. |
| Assessed party and evaluator | Reasonable market-rate payment is allowed. Payment or its amount cannot depend on the assessment outcome. The evaluator must maintain operational and management independence, including freedom from assessed-party control over conclusions and recommendations. | §8898.1(c)(2)(C)–(D). This permits an assessed-party-paid market subject to independence requirements; it does not establish an executed contract or actual fee schedule. |
| GovOps and advisory participants | Consult relevant stakeholders as appropriate; convene working groups including engineers from competing AI companies and AI-safety experts; report findings to the Legislature. | §8898.2. Advisory participation is not a private veto or an appointment of any named organization. |
| Designated IVO | Beginning no sooner than 12 months after designation, report annually on methods/standards, relevant governance or funding changes and application changes. Retain unredacted reports for five years. | §8898.3. Specified redactions protect trade secrets, security and other legally protected material, with justification where possible. Public reporting will not necessarily disclose all underlying material. |
| Developer, deployer or operator | May choose whether to use this verification route. | §8898.4(a)(3). The bill also does not require an IVO to perform covered compliance audits to register (§8898.4(a)(4)). This conclusion concerns SB 813, not duties imposed by other laws. |
| Court considering an audit | An audit performed according to an identified standard may be relevant but is not conclusive in a harm proceeding. | §8898.4(b). No affirmative defense or rebuttable presumption survives. Section 8898.4(a)(1) disclaims liability arising solely from failure to comply with a standard under this chapter. |
Alternative compliance material matters: §8898.1(g)–(h) calls for practicable alignment with existing auditing standards and permits substantially similar reports, assessments, audits or assurance work when the agency’s requirements are met. That is not automatic interstate reciprocity or acceptance of every existing certificate. The complete enrolled text contains no bespoke appeal, reconsideration or hearing procedure. This does not establish that ordinary administrative or judicial remedies are unavailable; the future agency procedures and any applicable general law would need separate examination.
The senator’s 26 March 2025 announcement identifies Fathom as sponsoring through its advocacy arm Meridian. Fathom’s 31 August 2026 release claims that it sponsored, developed and championed the IVO approach. The latter is an organization’s account of its contribution, not independent proof that it wrote each clause or controlled revisions. The exact legal relationship between Fathom and Meridian was not resolved in this lane. [Author’s original announcement](http[local research file] [Fathom’s passage account](http[local research file]
The most revealing interest is documented in an official source: the Senate Judiciary analysis for the 29 April 2025 hearing identifies Fathom as sponsor and reports that it hoped to become a model review organization (MRO), p.1. On p.9 it attributes to the sponsor the assessment that only a handful of entities were qualified and that Fathom considered itself among them. This establishes a historical prospective-beneficiary interest. It does not establish a later designation, award, monopoly or successful attempt to control an assessment. [Judiciary analysis, pp.1 and 9](http[local research file]
| Version or decision | Material rule or change | Evidentiary boundary |
|---|---|---|
| 26 March 2025, official version 20250SB81398AMD | Attorney General designation of MROs, renewable every three years; model/application certification could furnish an affirmative defense to specified personal-injury or property-damage liability, except intentional misconduct. | Historical text, particularly old §8898.4. This stronger legal incentive is absent from the enrolled bill. |
| 29 April hearing; 1 May 2025 version 20250SB81397AMD | Judiciary p.16 records author agreement to replace the affirmative defense with a rebuttable presumption. The 1 May text actually makes that replacement: certification could support presumed reasonable care, overcome by contrary admissible evidence. | Proposal/acceptance and subsequent text are separately supported. Deleted and added markup was checked, rather than treating both as operative. |
| 5 January 2026, official version 20250SB81396AMD | Recasts the institutional structure and deletes the rebuttable presumption. | Header/digest and the relevant deletion markup were read; this was not a complete audit of every January provision. |
| 1 July 2026 committee hearing on 16 June text; 2 July version reflected in August Appropriations | Intermediate seven-member commission, two levels of safety standards and dependencies involving AB 1405 and potentially AB 1709. Committee pp.14–15 report Encode’s request to distribute appointment authority and the author’s agreement to give appointments to the Speaker and Senate Rules. | A concrete instance of accepted input, but the commission and these appointment rights do not survive in the enrolled framework. Neither referenced Assembly bill was separately investigated. |
| 26 August amendment; enrolled 1 September 2026 | GovOps qualification framework, express voluntary scope, audit relevant but not conclusive; no commission, two-tier scheme, affirmative defense or rebuttable presumption. | Complete enrolled operative text read. Intermediate amendment dates for each individual deletion were not separately established. |
Official historical texts are available through the [bill text page’s Version selector](http[local research file] An ordinary URL parameter did not change the selected version and was not used as historical evidence. Normal read-only form selection returned the verified historical headers and amendment markup.
The final Senate floor analysis, dated 30 August and based on the 26 August text, records Anthropic, Encode and Fathom in support and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) opposed. Anthropic supports evaluator designation while explicitly advocating additional work to require independently evaluated developer safeguards. That additional requirement is advocacy beyond this bill. BSA objects to premature implementation, evaluator competence safeguards, international alignment and the possibility that undefined standards in litigation could make nominally voluntary audits a practical expectation. The last point is a documented prediction of indirect pressure, not evidence that insurers, procurers or courts have already made certification mandatory. [Official analysis index, Senate Floor 30 August 2026, analysisId 405892, pp.5–7](http[local research file]
The Assembly floor analysis dated 27 August calls Fathom the sponsor and reproduces its strategic case for competitive advantage and a potential national de facto standard; that passage expressly concerns a previous version. It must not be silently restated as an operative legal requirement. Its fiscal comments say Unknown. [Same official index, Assembly Floor 27 August 2026, analysisId 405661, pp.2–3](http[local research file]
A material fiscal trap remains in the official packet. The 5 August Appropriations hearing analysis, based on the 2 July commission version, estimates costs in the tens of millions for that framework. The final Senate floor document still reproduces fiscal discussion of superseded AG/MRO, rebuttable-presumption and commission provisions. Those are not reliable estimates of the final GovOps bill. Report the latest Assembly estimate as unknown; no enacted appropriation, operational budget or actual fee revenue is established here. [Same index, Assembly Appropriations entry 3 August, hearing 5 August, analysisId 402751, pp.1–3; Senate Floor 30 August, pp.4–5](http[local research file]
These are candidate assertions, not edits to the canonical graph.
| Candidate ID | Direction and typed relation | Date/state and limit |
|---|---|---|
| assurance-fathom-sponsors-sb813 | Fathom → SB 813: sponsors legislative proposal | Official author announcement, 26 March 2025; confirmed as sponsor in committee discussion. Sponsorship does not establish exclusive drafting or approval authority. |
| assurance-fathom-prospective-mro | Fathom → proposed MRO designation: expresses interest in becoming eligible operator | Official Judiciary report of sponsor position, 29 April 2025, pp.1, 9. Historical aspiration, not appointment. |
| assurance-sb813-govops-designation | Enrolled SB 813 → GovOps: would authorize evaluator qualification and suspension procedures | Enrolled 1 September 2026; enactment not established. Final §§8898.1–8898.2. |
| assurance-govops-ivo-conditions | GovOps → applicant/designated IVO: would impose qualification, independence and reporting conditions | Proposed statutory delegation; detailed implementing standards not yet established in this source packet. |
| assurance-assessed-party-ivo-payment | Assessed party → IVO: may pay reasonable market-rate assessment fees, without outcome contingency | Enrolled §8898.1(c)(2)(C). Permitted transaction class, not observed payment. |
| assurance-encode-intermediate-appointments | Encode → author’s intermediate commission amendment: requests shared appointment authority, reported accepted | July committee analysis pp.14–15; superseded institution, no surviving current appointment right. |
| assurance-bsa-voluntary-pressure-objection | BSA → SB 813: objects that litigation treatment could create practical pressure for voluntary audits | Final Senate floor pp.6–7, reported concern rather than demonstrated effect. |
| assurance-sb813-voluntary-operation | Enrolled SB 813 → AI developer/deployer/operator: preserves operation without this verification route | §8898.4(a)(3), proposed law. Does not negate other statutory or contractual requirements. |
Records were retrieved from their original publishers on 9 September 2026. The following hashes describe returned bodies inspected in memory; original bodies were not retained as separate local files in this lane. The official analysis PDFs are delivered by the index’s ordinary public form selectors, so the stable citation is the index plus dated entry, analysisId and PDF page. Hashes are corroborating retrieval identifiers, not a claim of locally preserved originals. No access restriction was bypassed.
| Record | Scope actually read | SHA-256 where recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Enrolled official text, billTextClient.xhtml, published 1 September 2026 21:00 | Header/digest and complete §§8898–8898.4 | 82a81fb20e59151762055d3c7461c3fbf5048ef7e1d92a58d4403b11a98bb646 |
| Official status and history pages | Full bill-specific status/history, through enrollment | Not recorded |
| Author 26 March and 30 August announcements; Fathom 31 August account | Complete substantive bill announcement bodies | Not recorded |
| Senate Judiciary PDF linked above | pp.1–3, 8–11, 14–17; decisive pp.1, 9, 16 | Not recorded |
| Official analysis index | Dated entry list and public form selectors | f04803891c081237681924f75aefdaf2192d5e98062f7f94fb47b482c95300f9 |
| Senate Floor, analysisId 405892, 30 August 2026 | All seven PDF pages | c3ac5b1617aef0a3770742619d2d1f1b31f01856aa3c7e778ed4a44fc5cd8414 |
| Assembly Floor, analysisId 405661, 27 August 2026 | All three PDF pages | 5e1efe9e6b56496c8df63dda2337a382f87ef22a98b540c09d518039025fdd9f |
| Assembly Appropriations, analysisId 402751, index 3 August/hearing 5 August | All three PDF pages; header identifies 2 July version | 0571f9c79fdda04b6566173d2b5764ba2c4fc78a94dc587cfd62c9a30d2453c9 |
| Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection, analysisId 401958, index 30 June/hearing 1 July | PDF pp.1, 10–23; header identifies 16 June version and proposed amendments. Earlier output for pp.2–9 was truncated and is not claimed read. | 6bb665073294fd314946d0d407cc30bfe51b618135e9c57fe9579755c0e942f3 |
| 26 March 2025 text, selector 20250SB81398AMD | Header/digest and relevant designation/liability provisions | 46962fbb523a016c058f4a3f77271c877698b422af840a284735b8f987ced7bc |
| 1 May 2025 text, selector 20250SB81397AMD | Header/digest and liability revision, including deletion/addition markup | 5cf00166a54d2d8267478b9844cb6c1ce908aa057d8dbd45917d2e3ca43cee3d |
| 5 January 2026 text, selector 20250SB81396AMD | Header/digest and relevant provisions/deleted presumption markup | 1566fc7d12befdbc0789355b0025c5c39f5291592458eea2fff933d94f116a2f |
This instrument supports a recognized verification market with government selection and independence rules, alongside a documented historical sponsor interest in becoming a recognized operator. It does not establish compulsory private certification, a current Fathom designation or enacted state authority. An ordinary policy-development explanation remains strong: legislators revised a sponsored proposal, removed stronger liability protections and preserved a voluntary route while opponents continued to contest its consequences.
The next records that could change this conclusion are a governor’s action/chapter record; adopted GovOps rules and actual designation decisions; and actual procurement, insurance, litigation or customer terms that condition participation on recognized verification. An application or decision naming Fathom would resolve prospective interest versus achieved status. A contract requiring an IVO audit would test indirect compulsion. No such record is established in this packet. Return to the whole-case review before opening those branches.