Massachusetts Voids the Anti-Public-Adjuster Clause and Names No One to Excise It

Chapter 187 of the Acts of 2026 ends at its second section, under a printed line reading "Approved, August 7, 2026." No third section, no effective-date clause, no applicability clause, no emergency preamble. The new G.L. c. 175 § 2C orders the anti-public-adjuster endorsement "excised from the policy of insurance" without saying who excises it.¹

Section 2C says "shall be excised." It does not say by whom.

Section 2C reaches both "a company as defined in section 1" and "any non-admitted or surplus lines insurer," and makes it unlawful to include language, a form or an endorsement prohibiting an insured from "hiring, retaining, engaging, utilizing, consulting or contracting with a public insurance adjuster, as defined in section 162, as a condition to recovery under such policy."¹ No home-state test, no carve-out.

Both operative commands then arrive in the passive voice: such language "shall be unenforceable and shall be excised from the policy of insurance."¹

No actor is named. Not the commissioner, not the Division of Insurance, not a court, not the insurer.

Section 2 adds subclause (o) to the unfair claim settlement practices at G.L. c. 176D § 3(9): "[a] provision in any policy of property or casualty insurance that prohibits an insured from hiring a public adjuster for services provided pursuant to this chapter."¹ That clause is commonly the predicate for a c. 93A demand, and Chapter 187 adds no damages or fees of its own.

The act never names November 5, 2026. The date is the 90-day referendum default: a general and permanent law passed without an emergency preamble "becomes effective 90 days after passage unless otherwise specified in the law," counted excluding the day of passage and including weekends and holidays.² Start at August 8. Day 90 is Thursday, November 5.

Texas bars the provision but reaches surplus lines only where Texas is the insured's home state.⁵ Louisiana covers property policies only and exempts commercial surplus lines.⁶ Neither statute carries an unenforceability or excision command, and the gap that leaves is the subject of our note on the surplus lines carve-out.

No bulletin, no filing guidance, no named actor

As of October 30, 2026 the Division of Insurance has published nothing implementing either section. Its bulletins index tops out at Bulletin 2025-06, issued December 19, 2025; the newest heading on the page is "Year 2025 Bulletins," and neither "public adjuster" nor "Chapter 187" appears anywhere on it, back through 2020.³ Thirteen filing guidance notices went out in 2026, 2026-A through 2026-M, every one of them health, dental or PBM, while the separate property and casualty list stops at 2025 with 2025-T on unfair and deceptive fees and 2025-R on flood exclusion disclosure.⁴ One blind spot: the Massachusetts base and supplemental form-filing checklists sit inside SERFF behind a filer login, so a quiet checklist revision cannot be ruled out from outside. The public record is empty, which is a different claim from saying the Division has done nothing.

What to write down before November 5

Nothing in the published record suggests a carrier will mail your client a corrected policy on November 6. Expect to find the endorsement still printed where it has always been printed, which changes what a pre-deadline policy audit produces. Record the form number and edition date exactly as printed, where the endorsement is referenced on the dec page or schedule of forms, the date you obtained the copy, and the policy's issue or renewal date.

Subclause (o) names a provision sitting in a policy of property or casualty insurance, and the act names no one to take it out.¹ The exhibit is two dated copies of the same form, one from either side of November 5. Whether § 2C reaches a policy already in force is genuinely open, and the statutory text does not settle it.

Document the endorsement. Telling the insured the clause is void is coverage counsel's call, and counsel will ask for the dated forms first.