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• A California bill would force large corporations to search their own records for links to chattel slavery and report findings under penalty of perjury.
• The measure has cleared the Assembly and a key Senate committee with strong bipartisan-adjacent support, but reparations payments themselves remain politically stalled.
• Critics warn of steep compliance costs and unclear evidentiary standards; supporters call it a modest transparency step, not a reparations mandate.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers are moving to do something no state has done before: legally compel the world's largest corporations to dig through their own archives and swear, under oath, whether their wealth was ever built on the backs of enslaved people.

Assembly Bill 2599, known as the Truth in Disclosure Act, is the work of Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Ladera Heights), vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. The bill would require any company doing business in California with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts to search its historical records and submit sworn affidavits disclosing any documented ties to chattel slavery, with those disclosures posted to a public, state-run digital archive that the California Civil Rights Department would be required to stand up by January 3, 2028.

The bill's reach is broad by design, targeting industries historically tied to the antebellum economy — insurance, banking, railroads and shipping — along with textiles and tobacco. It has already moved further than any comparable measure in the country: it passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee 9-3 in April, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee 11-1 in June, and was released from the legislative "suspense file" in August, sending it to the full Senate floor. If enacted, the measure would make California the first state to require major private corporations to report under oath their historical or financial ties to chattel slavery.

Bryan has framed the bill as an accountability tool, not a payout mechanism. The legislation would force corporations with over $100 million in revenue to disclose historical ties to chattel slavery, he has said, arguing that Californians deserve a public accounting of which institutions built wealth from that history. Backers, including the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation & Truth, describe it as a natural extension of a framework California already uses — the state's 2000 insurance-disclosure law and its 2010 Transparency in Supply Chains Act both required similar corporate self-reporting.

Examples of who would be swept in simply by clearing the $100 million revenue threshold:

Apple, Alphabet/Google, Meta, NVIDIA, Salesforce, Adobe, Cisco, Oracle, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Netflix, Disney, Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash, Block, PayPal, Intuit, Visa, Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab, Tesla, Chevron, PG&E, Sempra, Kaiser Permanente, Amgen, Gilead Sciences, Genentech, Live Nation, Snap, Reddit, Pinterest, Roblox, Electronic Arts, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, ServiceNow, Workday, Snowflake, Palantir, Rivian and SpaceX.

That short list speaks to the bill's scope, not a finding about any individual company's history. Many of the firms named in the list didn't even exist during the slavery era at all, and the bill doesn't presume guilt — it requires companies to search their own records and report what they find, which for a large share of modern firms will likely be nothing.

That distinction matters for the debate ahead. Critics, including business groups that have lobbied against the bill, raise practical concerns: what counts as a "documented tie" for a company that has undergone decades of mergers, acquisitions and corporate reorganizations?

What are the penalties for a good-faith conclusion that no records exist? And who absorbs the compliance cost of the historical research itself? Some observers have gone further, suggesting the disclosure requirement could function as leverage — a way to build a public record that strengthens the case for future corporate contributions to reparations funds, even without a direct payment mandate in the bill. That's a fair question to raise, but it remains a matter of interpretation and political strategy, not something the bill's text establishes.

Actual cash reparations, meanwhile, remain a much harder lift. Gov. Gavin Newsom has previously vetoed standalone reparations-payment bills over cost and legal concerns, and federal policy under the Trump administration remains opposed to government-funded reparations programs. A related bill from Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) would shield any future reparations payments from state income tax — a sign lawmakers are building infrastructure for reparations piece by piece, even without consensus on direct payouts.

Civil rights attorney Lisa Holder, a former member of the state's Reparations Task Force, has described the broader effort as a long game rather than a single bill. Progress, she has suggested, will require sustained legislative work across many fronts rather than one decisive vote.

AB 2599 now heads to the full Senate floor. If it passes and Newsom signs it, the first disclosures could begin appearing in a public archive within two years — giving Californians, for the first time, a state-sanctioned ledger of which corporate fortunes trace back to slavery, and which don't.

About the Author Samuel López covers legal and legislative affairs for USA Herald, with a focus on civil rights litigation, corporate accountability law, and California state policy.

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