The Full Court Will Consider Four Contested Issues Arising from the Commissioner’s 2024 and 2025 Rate Decisions
The Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear oral argument on March 4, 2026 in Workers’ Compensation Rating & Inspection Bureau of Massachusetts v. Commissioner of Insurance, SJC-13807, a consolidated appeal challenging the Commissioner’s 2024 and 2025 workers’ compensation rate decisions. Agency Checklists previously covered both the June 2024 decision ordering a 14.6% rate decrease and the May 2025 decision rejecting the WCRIBMA’s proposed 7.1% rate increase and holding rates unchanged.
The WCRIBMA, represented by Anderson & Kreiger LLP, appeals both decisions and asks the Full Court to vacate and remand them. The Commissioner of Insurance is represented by the Attorney General’s Office. Two Single Justices — Justice Kafker and Justice Gaziano — reserved and reported the respective cases to the Full Court in 2025, and the cases were consolidated for briefing and argument.
The Commissioner’s Threshold Argument
Before the substantive issues, the Commissioner raises a threshold argument that the Court need not reach the merits at all. Both rate filings were disapproved in part on the basis of the WCRIBMA’s underwriting profit provision, a ruling the WCRIBMA has not challenged on appeal. The Commissioner contends that this unchallenged ground independently supports affirming both decisions. The WCRIBMA counters that because the unexplained 14.6% decrease makes it impossible to determine what the profit provision contributed to the final rate, no independent ground can be established, and that issues likely to recur in future rate proceedings warrant the Court’s attention regardless.
The Four Issues the WCRIBMA Argues on the Merits
The 14.6% Rate Decrease. The WCRIBMA argues the 2024 Decision ordered nearly double its proposed decrease in a single conclusory sentence, offering no explanation of how the Commissioner arrived at that figure. The Commissioner responds that the statute expressly authorized the decrease under G.L. c. 152, § 53A(8) once all parties had advocated for a reduction, and that the brief explanation given satisfies the statutory requirement.
The “Range of Reasonableness” Standard. The WCRIBMA argues that the statute requires the Commissioner to establish quantitative upper and lower bounds and to defer to the WCRIBMA’s rates if they fall within those bounds. The WCRIBMA contends the 2025 Decision’s substitution of a “reasonable average observer” test — one that deliberately excludes any numerical bounds — is inconsistent with G.L. c. 152, § 53A. The Commissioner argues that the Court has previously declined to require a specific percentage range and that the WCRIBMA never presented evidence of any such range during the hearing.
Loss Development Methodology. Both decisions required the WCRIBMA to shift from using 2 years of historical paid loss data to 5 years, bringing COVID-era data into the calculation, a move all parties agreed was economically atypical. The WCRIBMA argues that this contradicts a 2003 Commissioner decision establishing a principle against ad hoc changes in methodology to achieve particular rate results, and that the Commissioner’s analysis is internally inconsistent, particularly in treating medical paid loss development differently from indemnity paid loss development without explanation. The Commissioner maintains that the 2003 decision established no binding rule, that substantial evidence supported the change, and that the WCRIBMA itself had already adopted five-year periods in a related context.
Class Code 9033 and NAHRO Data. The 2024 Decision ordered the WCRIBMA to use loss data from NAHRO — a financially distressed self-insurance group writing approximately 85% of Class Code 9033 business — as the credibility complement for that class code in future filings. The WCRIBMA argues this exceeds the Commissioner’s authority, contradicts a 2000 data quality order that expressly excluded SIG data from industry-wide ratemaking, ignored another SIG (MIIA) writing in the same class, and produces unfairly discriminatory results. The Commissioner contends the issue is not yet ripe for review and that, on the merits, the order is a permissible methodology directive supported by substantial evidence.
A decision from the Full Court should follow within 120 days after argument. Agency Checklists will report on the outcome.
