The federal staffing rule is dead. California’s survived — and 17 homes just paid $15 million.

Two years ago the federal government wrote the first national minimum for nursing home staffing: 3.48 hours of nursing care per resident per day, and a registered nurse on site around the clock. For families, it was the simplest protection anyone had proposed in decades — a floor, in numbers, that every home in the country had to clear.

It no longer exists. Here is what happened to it, in order.

• April 2025 — a federal court in Texas struck the requirements down, holding that the agency had gone further than Congress allowed.
• July 2025 — Congress blocked the standards from being implemented or enforced until 30 September 2034.
• September 2025 — the government dropped its appeals.
• February 2026 — the rule was formally repealed.

What is left is the older, vaguer federal standard: “sufficient” staff, a registered nurse for eight hours a day, and a full-time director of nursing. “Sufficient” is a word that has to be argued about after someone is already hurt.

The part that did not die

The ten-year block applies to the federal standard. It does nothing to state law — and California has its own: 3.5 direct care hours per resident per day, higher than the federal floor would have been.

In July, the California Attorney General settled with a chain operating 17 skilled nursing facilities over allegations it had run below that legal minimum more than 14,126 times between 2021 and 2024, while taking tens of millions of dollars in Medi-Cal money. The settlement was $15 million — $12.5m in penalties and costs, $2.5m into a staffing fund — plus an independent monitor sitting inside all 17 homes for three years.

That is what an enforceable number looks like. Not an argument about whether staffing was “sufficient”, but a count: on this many days, this home was below the line.

What it means where you live

California. The 3.5-hour rule is still law and is being enforced. If your person is in a California nursing home, the staffing record is a document with a legal standard attached to it — and short staffing that the owners knew about is exactly the pattern that turns an ordinary neglect claim into something more serious under California’s elder abuse law.

Arizona and Nevada. Neither has a comparable numeric floor. What both do have is Medicare’s published staffing data, which now comes from payroll records rather than the home’s own say-so — harder to massage than it used to be. It is the closest thing to an objective measure either state offers, and it is public.

Our watchdogs pull the staffing figures for every home in all three states each quarter. If you want to know how the home your parent is in compares with the one down the road, that is a question with an actual answer, and we will send it to you.

Sources: American Health Care Association v. Kennedy, N.D. Tex. (7 April 2025); Public Law 119-21 § 71111 (4 July 2025); Federal Register, “Repeal of Minimum Staffing Standards for Long-Term Care Facilities” (3 December 2025, effective 2 February 2026); California Attorney General, Sweetwater Care settlement announcement (28 July 2026).