AG Bonta Opposes Rule Eliminating AI Model Card Requirements in Healthcare

CA Attorney General Press Releases

Published March 2nd, 2026

Detected March 2nd, 2026

Summary

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced his opposition to a proposed Trump administration rule that would eliminate AI model card requirements for healthcare products. The rule change would remove transparency and bias protections for AI used in healthcare decisions.

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What changed

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has formally opposed a proposed rule by the Trump administration that seeks to eliminate the requirement for "model cards" for AI-driven healthcare products. These model cards, described as "nutrition labels" for AI, provide crucial information on the development, testing, potential risks, and biases of AI algorithms used in healthcare decisions, such as patient referrals or disease screening. The proposed rollback, part of a broader deregulatory effort by HHS, is seen by AG Bonta as a significant weakening of federal guardrails designed to ensure AI in healthcare is safe, effective, and equitable.

The practical implication of this opposition is a call to maintain existing transparency requirements for AI in healthcare. Healthcare providers and developers are currently expected to provide model cards to ensure compliance with federal and state laws, including anti-discrimination provisions. The removal of this requirement could make it harder for providers to ensure their AI tools are unbiased and compliant with regulations like the Affordable Care Act, potentially leading to discriminatory outcomes and increased risks for patients. The AG urges the administration to reverse this proposed change to safeguard against AI-driven bias and ensure patient safety.

What to do next

Review the proposed rule and its implications for AI in healthcare.
Assess current AI tools for transparency and bias mitigation.
Consider submitting comments to HHS regarding the proposed rule if applicable.

Source document (simplified)

Attorney General Bonta Opposes Trump Administration’s Proposed Slashing of Healthcare AI Transparency and Bias Protections

Press Release
Attorney General Bonta Opposes Trump Administration’s Prop… Monday, March 2, 2026 Contact: (916) 210-6000, agpressoffice@doj.ca.gov Proposed rule would eliminate one of the most significant guardrails currently in place on a federal level for the use of AI in healthcare **

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced that he sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) opposing a proposed rule that would roll back regulations that help ensure technology used by healthcare providers is safe, effective, and deployed without reinforcing unjust racial bias. The proposed rule at issue — entitled “Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: ASTP/ONC Deregulatory Actions To Unleash Prosperity” — would remove certification criteria requiring that model cards accompany health products that use artificial intelligence (AI). Model cards function like nutrition labels, providing critical information to providers and regulators, such as potential risks to patients and how AI models are developed and tested.

“New and emerging AI tools are used by many healthcare providers to make life-changing decisions, such as which patients to refer to specialists, which diseases to screen a patient for, or whether a reaction to an infection might be deadly. So, when AI gets it wrong in healthcare, the consequences can be deadly,” said Attorney General Bonta. “I oppose the Trump Administration’s proposed rollback of regulations that require clarity about how AI tools used in healthcare were developed and tested. Delivering safe, effective, and equitable access to healthcare services must be at the forefront of any attempt to integrate AI and healthcare.”

In response to the increase of automated decision-making tools trained on electronic health records, the Biden Administration unveiled the model card requirement. The Biden-era rule, previously supported by Attorney General Bonta, requires healthcare software developers seeking certification of their products to be more transparent about the data they are using to model their algorithms and whether they have been tested to ensure their outcomes are fair and unbiased. This is important because if algorithms are trained on a narrow or limited dataset, they can inadvertently learn and perpetuate biases present in that data. For example, a 2019 study found that a widely used algorithm used to help hospitals identify high-risk patients was racially biased.

In his letter today, Attorney General Bonta warns that HHS’s proposed rule would eliminate one of the most significant guardrails currently in place on a federal level for the use of AI in healthcare and urges the federal administration to reverse course. AI systems are novel and complex, and their inner workings are often not understood even by developers and entities that use AI, resulting in situations where AI tools have generated false information or biased and discriminatory results.

The proposed rule also does not take into consideration the significant burden it is placing on health providers by removing the model card requirement. For example, healthcare providers’ compliance with both federal and state laws becomes much more difficult without model card requirements. The Affordable Care Act prohibits providers from discriminating based on a patient’s protected status. And last year, Attorney General Bonta issued an AI advisory about the application of California law to AI in healthcare, providing guidance specific to healthcare entities about their obligations under California law. Removing the model card requirement eliminates a critical tool for providers to ensure that they are providing nondiscriminatory healthcare in compliance with these laws.