California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring large companies operating in the state to investigate and publicly disclose historical transactions linked to slavery, adding a corporate transparency requirement to the state’s broader reparations effort.
Assembly Bill 2599, authored by Democratic Assembly member Isaac Bryan, covers businesses with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts that existed, or have a predecessor company that existed, on or before Dec. 31, 1964. The measure requires covered companies to search historical records for transactions involving enslaved people, including their purchase or sale, use as collateral for loans and slavery-related insurance.
“This is a bill that requires large companies that operated before 1965 to search their records for ties to slavery going back to 1849 and then we make it public,” Newsom said in an interview with civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, according to Fox News Digital. “These are insurance policies on enslaved people. Human beings used as collateral, quite literally as collateral for loans. Accountability, as Bryan said, starts with the truth.”
The law requires companies to submit affidavits under penalty of perjury verifying that they have searched for relevant records. The disclosures are intended to become publicly accessible through a state digital platform, creating a central repository of information about corporate connections to slavery-era transactions.
For companies doing business in California as of Jan. 1, 2028, the first affidavits are due by Jan. 15, 2029, or later if the state has not yet developed the platform. The requirements are to take effect once the Legislature provides funding.
Bryan has argued that the measure would help reveal how private companies accumulated wealth through slavery. During a June legislative hearing, he said: “For centuries, private corporations across the country benefited from chattel slavery. They benefited from the economic wealth transfer of free labor.”
The legislation follows California’s establishment of a first-in-the-nation Reparations Task Force, which issued more than 100 recommendations in 2023 for addressing the effects of slavery and discrimination. Its proposals covered potential monetary compensation as well as changes involving housing, education, policing, health and economic disparities.
Newsom has previously declined to endorse direct cash payments proposed as part of the reparations debate. In a 2023 statement to Fox News Digital, he said addressing slavery’s legacy required measures beyond financial compensation.
“Dealing with that legacy is about much more than cash payments,” Newsom said at the time.
The new law also raises questions about overlap with existing disclosure requirements, particularly in the insurance industry. California has required insurers to research and disclose slavery-era insurance policies since 2000, with records maintained by the state Department of Insurance.
Several insurance industry groups opposed AB 2599, according to an analysis by the California Senate Judiciary Committee. Their objections centred on whether the new mandate duplicates work insurers have already completed under the earlier law.
“AB 2599 appears to require reporting that substantially overlaps with the work already completed pursuant to SB 2199 and codified in CA INS 13810,” the opponents said.
The California Reparations Task Force report cited JPMorgan Chase as a historical example of financial institutions’ links to slavery. According to the report, the bank apologised in 2005 after research found that two predecessor banks had accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved people as collateral for loans and eventually taken ownership of about 1,250 people when borrowers defaulted.
The law has also drawn political criticism. Republican National Committee Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre told Fox News Digital that California should prioritise affordability and other domestic concerns rather than expanding the reparations effort.
California’s new requirement places corporate historical disclosure at the centre of its approach to accountability for slavery-era economic activity. The legislation establishes a process for uncovering and publishing records, but it does not, in the provisions described by Fox News Digital, establish a new compensation payment for people affected by slavery or their descendants.
