California bill would make major companies reckon with their historical ties to slavery

Corporations with more than $100 million in annual sales could be required to disclose whether they profited from slavery.

California’s Legislature has passed a bill requiring major corporations to dig into their own histories and disclose any ties to slavery, sending the measure to Gov. Gavin Newsom for a decision.

The Sacramento Bee reported that Assembly Bill 2599, approved Wednesday, would apply to companies generating more than $100 million in worldwide annual sales.

Those businesses would be required to search their records, along with those of any predecessors or subsidiaries, for evidence they bought or sold enslaved people or profited from financing those transactions, including through insurance or loans.

The bill’s reach is bounded by time. It only covers businesses, or their predecessors, that existed before December 1964, a threshold intended to capture companies with direct historical exposure to the slave trade rather than sweeping in every modern corporation.

Reparations advocates were split on how much the measure actually accomplishes. Some viewed its passage as meaningful progress, while others questioned whether the disclosure requirement carries enough weight to matter in practice.

Insurance companies pushed back during the legislative process, arguing the bill duplicates an existing state law that already requires disclosure of historical policies issued to slaveholders covering the death or injury of enslaved people. As reported by the Bee, companies including New York Life Insurance, Aetna and AIG have previously disclosed such ties under that earlier statute.

There’s also a practical catch built into the bill’s final version. Implementation depends entirely on the Legislature allocating funding, since the state’s Civil Rights Department would need that money to build the digital platform where disclosures would be housed.

Assembly member Isaac Bryan, the bill’s author, downplayed concerns that funding might stall, telling the Bee the cost involved is modest and expressing confidence the money will materialize.

Newsom now has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill. If signed, California would join a small number of states that have pursued corporate disclosure requirements tied to slavery, adding another data point to the broader, still unresolved national conversation about reparations and historical accountability.