California Could Make Corporations Open Their Records on Profits From Slavery If Gavin Newsom Signs New Bill

Names of enslaved people, slaveholders and records showing human beings used as collateral could become part of a California database under a bill now headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The records would come from corporations required to search their own histories for profits or transactions connected to slavery.

Assembly Bill 2599, known as the Truth in Disclosure Act, applies to businesses operating in California with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts. A company would fall under the requirements if it, a predecessor or another covered related entity existed on or before Dec. 31, 1964.

Corporations finding those connections would face more than a basic disclosure requirement. They would have to submit sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury, with filings that could identify enslaved people and slaveholders along with records showing how money changed hands.

Buying or selling enslaved people would be only one type of transaction covered by the legislation. Companies would also have to search for records involving loans used to purchase enslaved people, insurance policies and instances in which human beings were used as collateral for financial transactions.

Once submitted, the information would be collected by the California Civil Rights Department for a digital system accessible to anyone searching the records. Researchers, descendants and other members of the public could then examine corporate connections that may reach back more than a century.

California has confronted this type of corporate history before. A slavery-era insurance law enacted in 2000 required insurers to disclose policies issued to slaveholders covering the death or injury of enslaved people, producing records tied to companies including New York Life, Aetna and American International Group.

AB 2599 does not order corporations to pay reparations for anything uncovered in their archives. The legislation requires companies to document what their records contain as California considers how slavery and discriminatory practices contributed to wealth disparities experienced by Black Californians.

Whether those corporate records actually reach a state database will also depend on money from Sacramento. Late amendments specify that the requirements become operative only when lawmakers appropriate funding, with the Civil Rights Department responsible for creating the digital system.

Insurance groups have opposed the legislation, arguing in part that existing California requirements already forced their businesses to disclose slavery-era policies. Backers say AB 2599 reaches beyond insurance records and could uncover financial relationships involving other types of corporations.

Newsom now decides whether the measure becomes California law. He has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto AB 2599, and the legislation would become law without his signature if he takes no action by that deadline.