The suspensions that need no hearing: bond, workers' compensation, qualifier, unpaid judgment, unpaid arbitration award, unpaid citation, unpaid taxes, and how each is lifted
In one paragraph
Most of what ends a license does not come from a hearing. It comes from a missed piece of paper that the statute converts into a suspension 'by operation of law,' effective before anyone at CSLB has read a file: a surety that cancels the bond, a workers' compensation policy that lapses, a qualifier who leaves and is not replaced in 90 days, a judgment nobody reported, an arbitration award or citation nobody paid, a tax bill nobody resolved. This lesson lists the seven, with the trigger, the effective date, and the specific document that lifts each, because the fix is different for each and the 90-day retroactive windows for bonds and workers' compensation are the difference between a clerical scare and a permanent unlicensed gap under 7031.
The rule
The contractor's bond is a condition of the license's continued maintenance (B&P 7071.6(a)), and a lapse suspends it until a new bond or rescission is on file, retroactively if received within 90 days of its effective date (7071.7; CSLB Bond Suspensions); a workers' compensation lapse suspends the license by operation of law from the lapse date, cured retroactively by a certificate received within 90 days (7125.2, 7125.1); a qualifier not replaced within 90 days of disassociation suspends the license or removes the classification (7068.2); an unsatisfied final judgment not reported within 90 days suspends the license when the registrar learns of it, lifted only by proof of satisfaction or a notarized accord (7071.17(b)); an unpaid arbitration award or unpaid citation suspends the license 30 days after notice and revokes it if not reinstated within 90 days (7085.6, 7090.1); unresolved final tax and fee liabilities may suspend after a 60-day preliminary notice (7145.5). Work performed while suspended is unlicensed work (7028(a)(2); 7031).
Why it matters
A suspension by operation of law has no hearing, no notice-and-cure, and usually no phone call; the lookup changes and the contractor finds out from a customer, a building department or a general contractor's compliance clerk. Every one of the seven is preventable by a calendar entry or a piece of mail, and every one is fixable fastest by the specific document the statute names. Knowing the list is how a growing shop never learns any of it the expensive way.