Subdivision (a) is the operative bar. If the lessor retaliates against the tenant because of the tenant’s exercise of rights under this chapter, or because of a complaint to an appropriate agency as to the tenantability of the dwelling, and if the tenant is not in default as to the payment of rent, the lessor may not recover possession, cause the tenant to quit involuntarily, increase the rent, or decrease any services within 180 days. The protected events that start the clock are enumerated: notice given under section 1942 or an oral complaint to the lessor as to tenantability; a written complaint — or a recorded oral complaint — to an appropriate agency, of which the lessor has notice, to correct a tenantability condition; the procurement of an inspection or citation; and the tenant’s lawful participation in a proceeding or a tenant organization. The 180-day period runs from the latest applicable date.

Subdivision (b) permits a tenant to invoke subdivision (a) only once in any twelve-month period. The protections are not boundless — but within the window they are exacting.

Under subdivision (a), three facts make the tenant’s prima facie case: that the tenant was not in default as to rent; that the tenant performed a protected act; and that the lessor took an adverse act — a notice, a rent increase, a withdrawal of services, or a proceeding to recover possession — within 180 days. On that showing the burden shifts. The lessor must come forward with a legitimate, good-faith, non-retaliatory ground.

Subdivision (g) supplies the lessor’s lawful path through the window: the lessor may still recover possession, raise rent, or do the other acts described in subdivision (a) if the notice, pleading, or statement of issues states the ground upon which the lessor in good faith seeks to act. But the subdivision adds the decisive clause — if the statement is controverted, the lessor shall establish its truth at the trial or other hearing. The contest therefore narrows to a single question: is the asserted ground bona fide, or is it a cover for the protected complaint?

Beyond the enumerated acts, subdivision (d) bars retaliation for a tenant’s lawful and peaceable exercise of any rights under the law. There the tenant must prove the lessor’s retaliatory motive, without the benefit of the 180-day presumption — a heavier burden, but a wider one, reaching conduct the enumerated list does not name.

And the statute does not occupy the field. Subdivision (j) makes its remedies cumulative with those provided by decisional law, and the common-law doctrine of retaliatory eviction — recognized by the California Supreme Court well before the statute’s present form — runs in parallel. The principle the courts have fixed is plain: a lessor may recover possession for any lawful reason, or for none, but is not free to evict in retaliation for a tenant’s report of conditions to the authorities. The common-law branch, unlike subdivision (a), is not bounded by the 180-day clock.

Retaliation does not stand alone. Independently, once a tenant has continuously and lawfully occupied a dwelling for twelve months, the lessor must state a just cause in any notice terminating the tenancy (§ 1946.2), and the rent is capped (§ 1947.12). Both protections were written into this tenancy at its inception by the Rent Cap and Just Cause Addendum — C.A.R. Form RCJC 12/20, executed April 21, 2022, DocuSign Envelope #E1408B26-9382-47C5-827B-BB69325B53BC, signed for the housing provider by the listing agent.

The overlay matters to the retaliation analysis because it forecloses a no-cause exit. By the spring of 2024 the tenancy was past twenty-four months. The lessor’s only lawful route to possession was a stated, bona fide cause — which returns the inquiry to subdivision (g): the asserted ground must be true, and if controverted, proven.

On the documented record three protected acts precede the lessor’s adverse act. Each is presented as a question against the statutory elements.

The statute’s window is 180 days. The interval between the protected complaints and the lessor’s adverse acts is measured in weeks. The record sits squarely inside subdivision (a).

The retaliation bar runs against the lessor and those who act for the lessor. Exposure is calibrated honestly: it is stated against the party who took the adverse act, framed as a state supervisory or documentary question where the record places an actor at the edges. Every party is presumed to have acted lawfully. No finding has been made.