Gavin Newsom must veto bogus corporate slavery bill

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 1965 with the ratification of the Thirteenth 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.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story 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 in such a way that the companies could easily be sued by big law firms —  Democrats’ major donors — to extract monies 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 dictate to any company formed anywhere outside the state that it must comply with another administrative rule that will cost time and money simply for the right to do business in California.�...