Homeowners’ fight for fire insurance coverage is heating up in California.

After an order from the state’s insurance commissioner to expand coverage options, a statewide insurance program meant to be a last resort for homeowners who can’t find a traditional policy has gone to court to try to put a stop to the changes.

The FAIR Plan, which is funded by insurance companies, filed a petition Friday asking the Los Angeles Superior Court to force Commissioner Ricardo Lara to “annul, vacate, or withdraw” the order he issued last month.

As fires have ravaged California, insurance companies have increasingly refused to provide fire insurance to many of the state’s residents most at risk of being affected by wildfires — from the Santa Cruz mountains to the Oakland hills. According to Department of Insurance figures, companies have dropped nearly 350,000 home insurance policies over the last four years, and analysts expect that figure to rise as the market responds to more recent fires like the Kincade Fire that tore through Sonoma County in October and destroyed hundreds of structures.

As a result, many homeowners have been forced to the bare-bones FAIR Plan, which offers less coverage for more money than many traditional policies.

To ease what he called a growing crisis, the commissioner in November ordered the plan to begin offering what’s known as an HO-3 policy, a more comprehensive plan than it has offered in the past. The move angered the insurance industry. Lara also said the plan needed to increase coverage limits from $1.5 million to $3 million and allow residents to pay by credit card, with a monthly payment option.

Now, while the FAIR Plan says it supports most of those changes, it is pushing back at the order to offer more comprehensive coverage, saying it will raise costs for homeowners and arguing the order is outside the plan’s mandate to provide basic insurance coverage.

“We appreciate the efforts of the commissioner to address the impact of California’s devastating wildfires on homeowners,” said Anneliese Jivan, president of the California FAIR Plan Association, in a statement. “Unfortunately, this order, as written, would negatively impact consumers and further destabilize the voluntary insurance marketplace because the order provides no incentive for the private market to offer insurance in areas at risk of wildfire. We regret having to take this action, but we will do everything we can to continue to protect policyholders and provide stability in the insurance marketplace.”

The FAIR Plan also alleged the order could compromise the privacy and security of policyholders’ financial data. And it balked at the fact that the order prevents the plan from passing credit card charge fees to customers who go that route. The FAIR Plan also said it would need the insurance department’s approval for a rate increase to go along with the higher coverage limits so rates “remain actuarially sound and sufficient to cover future losses.”

Wildfire claims soared above $26 billion in the state in 2017 and 2018. Right now, many homeowners forced into the FAIR Plan supplement their fire insurance policy with another policy to cover other types of damage.

“Unfortunately, the commissioner’s order would lead to unintended consequences that will harm consumers by increasing costs of property insurance and restricting options in the voluntary insurance market,” Jivan said.

In the statement, the FAIR Plan said it had hoped to work with Lara and the legislature on a path forward but “recognizes that this path forward is no longer viable.”

Lara rejected the lawsuit’s allegations.

“I took these actions on behalf of California consumers throughout the state who are struggling to find adequate coverage to protect their homes,” Lara said in a statement. “I will fight for consumers against this industry-driven lawsuit. Insurers can’t have it both ways; they cannot continue to cancel policyholders at an alarming rate, leaving them with the FAIR Plan as their only option, with woefully inadequate coverage.”

The court filing follows a letter Jivan sent Lara on Dec. 5 outlining her concerns.

“From an operational standpoint, we could not comply with the HO-3 Order by June of 2020 because we do not have the rate, form, claims expertise, underwriting expertise, operational infrastructure or programming capacity to develop such product,” the letter says. “Developing the infrastructure needed to introduce a HO-3 policy within six months is akin to requiring the (insurance department) to commence regulation of a new industry like banking, which would not be feasible.”