California is making big companies search their own old files and say, under oath, if they or a predecessor once bought, sold, insured, or financed enslaved people. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Truth in Disclosure Act, also called Assembly Bill 2599, on Sept. 30. It is the first law of its kind in the United States.
The rule hits firms doing business in California with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts. It only reaches those that existed, or had a predecessor that existed, on or before Dec. 31, 1964. That date line matters. It draws a boundary around the era of chattel slavery and the decades after, when records still exist and when many corporate lineages were formed.
Covered companies must comb through records in their own possession and those of related entities. They must look for transactions that involved enslaved people. That can mean purchases or sales. It can mean using people as collateral. It can mean loans to buy people. It can mean insurance on those people or on those deals. It can mean other services that helped those transactions happen.
Then they must file an affidavit under penalty of perjury. The affidavit must state what they found. It must list the names of enslaved people and slaveholders found in the records. It must include evidence of transactions that produced financial benefit from slavery. Those filings will go into a public, searchable database run by the state's Civil Rights Department. The first filings are due Jan. 15, 2029 for businesses already operating in California as of Jan. 1, 2028.
This is not a conduct mandate. It does not tell companies how to run their supply chains today. It does not order reparations. It orders truth. It forces a search. It forces a sworn statement. It puts that statement where anyone can read it. That is a real shift. For years, California has asked large retailers and manufacturers to post statements about efforts to fight trafficking and slavery in their supply chains. That law, the Transparency in Supply Chains Act, set a $100 million threshold too. But it asked for policies and training and audits. This new law asks for history. It asks for names. It asks for a yes or no, backed by a signature and the threat of perjury.
I like that the lever is simple. Search. Swear. Publish. It targets high-revenue companies to address a serious human rights issue. It uses a tool we already understand: sworn disclosure. It makes the cost of lying clear. That feels like progress. It feels like the state is finally using its power to pull back a curtain that has stayed closed on purpose.
But here is the catch. The law only takes effect once the Legislature appropriates funding. The Civil Rights Department must build the database and the filing platform. That work is not free. It is not instant. Business groups have already raised concerns about compliance costs and the burden of verifying old records. Some companies may not have clean archives. Some may have lost files in mergers, fires, or moves across states. Others may have records that are hard to read or hard to trust. That does not excuse a search. It does make the search harder. It also raises the risk of uneven results. A firm with a strong legal team and a deep records room will file a different affidavit than a firm that must piece together a history from microfilm and old ledgers.
There is another catch. The law reaches only firms tied to California by revenue and presence. Many large companies operate here. Many do not. That means the database will show a slice of the picture, not the whole map. A company can have deep roots in slavery and miss the threshold if its California slice is small. A company can hit the threshold and have no ties at all. Both outcomes are possible. Both will be visible. That is useful. It is also incomplete.
Still, the core idea is strong. Make the search real. Make the statement sworn. Make the results public. That combination changes behavior. It changes what boards talk about. It changes what general counsel ask for. It changes what historians and journalists can find. It gives families and communities a place to look. It gives investors a new risk factor to price in. It gives the state a record it can use in future policy, including any reparations work that follows.
The deadline is years away. That is good. It gives time to build the system right. It gives time for guidance. It gives time for companies to start the work now instead of waiting. It also gives time for pushback. Expect lawsuits. Expect lobbying. Expect calls to narrow the scope or delay the date. That is the pattern. New transparency laws always face friction. The test will be whether the state holds the line on the simple parts: the search, the oath, the public database.
I do not know what the first filings will show. I do not know which names will appear. I do know this. For the first time, a state is forcing large companies to look into their own past and say, on the record, what they find about slavery. That is not a fix. It is a start. And it is the kind of start that makes the next steps possible.
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