diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 795ef7d4370..0d59e27c780 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -324,6 +324,7 @@ Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
                have HADOOP-6151 patch (Kannan Muthukkaruppan via Stack)
    HBASE-2382  Don't rely on fs.getDefaultReplication() to roll HLogs
                (Nicolas Spiegelberg via Stack)  
+   HBASE-2415  Disable META splitting in 0.20 (Todd Lipcon via Stack)
 
   IMPROVEMENTS
    HBASE-1760  Cleanup TODOs in HTable
diff --git a/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java b/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
index 99fb21f6fac..cd0c486fd47 100644
--- a/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
+++ b/core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/regionserver/Store.java
@@ -1214,6 +1214,14 @@ public class Store implements HConstants, HeapSize {
       if (!force && (storeSize < this.desiredMaxFileSize)) {
         return null;
       }
+
+      if (this.region.getRegionInfo().isMetaRegion()) {
+        if (force) {
+          LOG.warn("Cannot split meta regions in HBase 0.20");
+        }
+        return null;
+      }
+
       // Not splitable if we find a reference store file present in the store.
       boolean splitable = true;
       long maxSize = 0L;