When it comes to car insurance, people living in minority neighborhoods may be getting left in the dust.

A report released Wednesday from the nonprofit investigative reporting organizations ProPublica and Consumer Reports alleges that major insurers including Allstate, Geico and Liberty Mutual have charged premiums that on average were 30% higher in urban minority zip codes than those in comparable neighborhoods that are not made up of mostly minorities.

ProPublica requested public records in all 50 states and in Washington, D.C., asking for zip-code level data about liability claims payouts, and received data from California, Illinois, Missouri and Texas. After analyzing that data, “many of the disparities in auto insurance prices between minority and white neighborhoods are wider than differences in risk can explain,” their report said.

The researchers described two men who live in different neighborhoods in Chicago. Despite having similar insurance policies with the same insurer, the man who lives in a neighborhood with fewer minority residents (Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood) pays $54.67 each month, and the driver who lives in a neighborhood with a higher minority population (East Garfield Park), which the report said is actually safer from an auto insurance perspective, pays $190.69.

Many factors go into determining pricing for auto insurance, including the driver’s record (such as accidents or driving violations), how much someone uses his or her car, where the car is parked and where the person lives (those who live in places with higher rates of vandalism and theft tend to pay more), plus age, gender, the type of car, credit history and type and amount of coverage.

Insurers are not legally allowed to ask a person’s race when determining their pricing, said James Lynch, the chief actuary and vice president of research and education at the Insurance Information Institute, an industry organization. He said the story ProPublica and Consumer Reports published on the topic of discrimination in auto insurance was “inaccurate,” “unfair” and “irresponsible.”

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There were, he said, problems with ProPublica and Consumer Reports’s methodology, which the Insurance Information Institute had reviewed by third-party actuaries. He said rates are based on risk factors such as a propensity for more accidents, or the fact that people in certain neighborhoods tend to drive fewer miles than in others, rather than race.

However, this isn’t the first study that has shown minorities may be charged more for auto insurance, said Robert Hunter, the director of insurance at the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Consumer Federation of America, who previously was the commissioner of insurance for the state of Texas. Communities where more than three quarters of residents are African American have premiums 70% higher on average than those in populations that are less than one quarter African American, an average of $1,060 versus $622, a 2015 CFA study found.

ProPublica also listed previous studies that found similar results, including a 2007 study from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, which found “redlining factors” (excluding certain communities) are associated with variations in insurance costs. “If this were the only study ever done, I’d say it doesn’t prove much,” Hunter said. “But it’s another study in a long string of studies, so that gives it more weight.”

Insurance companies said they were committed to equitable prices for all consumers. A Liberty Mutual spokesman said in an email that the company is committed to offering drivers “fair and competitively priced” car insurance. Allstate uses the likelihood of loss to price insurance, “and specific prices are approved by state regulators,” a company spokeswoman said. Geico did not immediately respond to request for comment.

To truly explore the issue, he said states could require insurance companies to file data by zip code, so that it could be analyzed to find any discriminatory practices. “There’s a way to do it, but (insurance companies) don’t want to,” Hunter said. The Insurance Information Institute’s Lynch added, “There’s just no room for discrimination in a marketplace like that.”