Gavin Newsom Must Veto Bogus Corporate ‘Slavery’ Bill
Fighting slavery in a state that never had it is nothing but a money grab for lawyers.
California entered the Union as a free state in 1850. Yet California legislators have sent a bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk requiring all large corporations in California to disclose any past ties to slavery.
Slavery officially ended in the United States in December 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. You might think that elected officials in California would know that.
Then again, the Constitution has never been particularly important to the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. And California has never worried about adding costs to business or driving them out of the state.
The bill, AB 2599, passed both houses of the Legislature on party lines. It would force all corporations doing business in California with annual worldwide gross receipts of $100 million or more to complete affidavits — subject to penalties for lying under oath — disclosing whether they or predecessor entities engaged in slavery-era transactions from which they profited.
The filings would be posted to a publicly searchable state database. Companies would have to search through their records and disclose any slavery-related activity.
The bill is structured so companies could easily be sued by big law firms — Democrats’ major donors — to extract money for noncompliance.
There are a few amazing aspects of this legislation, other than the obvious one that California never legalized slavery within its borders.
The first is the audacity of the California Legislature to require any company formed anywhere outside the state to comply with another administrative rule that will cost time and money simply to do business in California.
The second fascinating aspect is that a 34-year-old state assemblyman, Isaac Bryan of Los Angeles, who has been in office for three years and has hardly held a job outside of politics, believes he can author a law to tell American companies with worldwide operations how to run their businesses.
It is bad enough that long-time US senators are arrogant enough to believe they know enough to tell these businesses what to do, but an obscure legislator from California — really?
Did Bryan ever wonder how many companies this law might actually affect? An estimated 21,000-plus businesses in the United States do over $100 million in annual revenue. Now they all must check whether they do business in California. How many will even know about this meddling law?
It is bad enough that long-time US senators are arrogant enough to believe they know enough to tell these businesses what to do, but an obscure legislator from California — really?
Another question is how many large companies existed in 1865, when slavery ended. The number is not definitive, but is estimated, surprisingly, at between 150 and 250 companies. It is unclear how many of these companies still have records surviving from 1865, or even from before 1900.
The answer is most likely zero. Why would they keep records going back that long? And if they did, can you imagine what condition the records would be in, and how long it might take for the companies to review them?
And if these companies had acquired other companies at any point, how would they know exactly what their activities were 170 years ago? How many corporate officers would be willing to sign a sworn statement under the penalty of perjury about the activities of their company, or other companies, 170 years ago?
AB 2599 is clearly a virtue-signaling money grab. Newsom should veto this disaster, for the sake of California residents, before more businesses refuse to do business in the state.
Instead of wasting time on frivolous and harmful laws like these, our elected officials should focus on more relevant problems. Or maybe they should just stop trying to fix anything at all, because they are likely to do more harm than good.
-Bruce Bialosky
Bruce Bialosky, a former presidential appointee, is a certified public accountant specializing in taxes.
