Key Takeaways

• California’s AB 2599 requires qualifying corporations with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts to investigate and disclose documented financial ties to slavery after funding is appropriated.
• Covered corporations must examine their records and related-entity records, then submit findings to the California Civil Rights Department through an affidavit under penalty of perjury.
• The public database is due within one year after legislative funding is appropriated, so it does not yet have a fixed launch date.

Which major corporations have financial histories tied to slavery? A new California law could make some of those answers easier for the public to find.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2599, legislation from State Assembly member Isaac Bryan, on Wednesday (Sept. 30), per Precinct Reporter News. Known as the Truth in Disclosure Act, the measure creates new disclosure requirements for certain large companies doing business in California.

The law applies to businesses with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts that existed, or had a predecessor company in existence, on or before Dec. 31, 1964. Once the Legislature appropriates funding for the law, covered corporations must search their records and those of related entities for evidence connecting them to slavery-era commerce. Their findings must be submitted to the California Civil Rights Department through an affidavit under penalty of perjury.

Which companies must disclose ties to slavery under AB 2599?

The records could reveal whether companies or their predecessors bought or sold enslaved people, used them as collateral, financed their purchase, insured them or helped facilitate related transactions. Companies must also disclose relevant names of enslaved people and slaveholders found in their records, along with evidence of transactions that generated financial benefits from slavery.

“AB 2599 focuses on transparency and accountability. If corporations benefited from slavery, the public deserves to know. This bill ensures we uncover those truths and make that information accessible to all Californians,” Bryan said in a legislative analysis of the bill.

California to create public database of slavery-era corporate ties

According to the text of AB 2599, the Civil Rights Department is tasked with building a digital platform where the affidavits, records and reported data can be accessed by the public. That database will include estimates of revenue generated through slavery-related transactions, including the sale of enslaved people, insurance claims and goods produced through enslaved labor.

There is an important caveat: implementation depends on funding appropriated by the California Legislature. The department must create the public platform within one year after that appropriation is made, meaning the database does not have a fixed launch date yet.

The measure joins California’s broader reparations efforts, which began with Newsom signing legislation in 2020 to establish the California Reparations Task Force. Supporters of AB 2599 describe the new law as another step toward documenting how slavery helped generate wealth that extended beyond individual slaveholders and into American industries — all while withholding much of it from the enslaved and their descendants.