Chevron just finished moving its corporate headquarters from California to Texas after more than 140 years in the state.
Sacramento Democrats just handed every company still standing in the state one more reason to follow.
California's legislature just sent Gavin Newsom a bill that could force every major American company to swear a legal oath about their past.
California Reparations Bill AB 2599 Forces Corporate Slavery Disclosures Under Penalty of Perjury
Assembly Bill 2599 – the "Truth in Disclosure Act" – passed the California State Senate on August 27 and now sits on Governor Gavin Newsom's desk waiting for his signature.
The bill targets any company doing business in California with more than $100 million in annual worldwide revenue.
If Newsom signs it, those companies must file sworn affidavits – under penalty of perjury – declaring whether they or any predecessor company bought, sold, or insured enslaved people in transactions dating back to 1849.
The companies must dig through their own historical records for evidence of slavery-era insurance policies, loans, and financial transactions.
A government digital platform – built and maintained on California taxpayers' dime – would then display every corporate confession publicly for anyone to search.
The bill was authored by Democrat Assemblymember Isaac Bryan of Ladera Heights and cleared the full legislature on a 60-13 vote.
It would make California the first state in the nation to require sworn corporate slavery disclosures.
New York Life, Aetna, and AIG have already disclosed ties to slaveholders under an earlier California law targeting insurers.
AB 2599 casts a wider net – any major financial institution, railroad, shipper, or manufacturer still in operation before December 31, 1964 falls under its reach.
California Corporate Exodus Accelerates as Reparations Mandates Mount
California's corporate exodus stopped being a trend and became a stampede.
In 2025 alone, In-N-Out Burger announced it was heading for Tennessee and Realtor.com relocated to Austin.
In 2026, Public Storage – a California institution since 1972, headquartered in Glendale for 50 years – packed its corporate offices and moved to Frisco, Texas.
Yamaha Motor Corp. announced it was leaving Cypress, California for Kennesaw, Georgia after nearly half a century in the state.
The state is staring down a projected $50 to $70 billion deficit for fiscal year 2025-2026 – a stunning collapse from a $97 billion surplus just four years ago.
AB 2599 is by reparations advocates' own count the 15th reparations-related measure to advance since California's 2023 Reparations Task Force released its 1,100-page report.
The compliance burden alone – legal teams, historical records searches, predecessor company research going back 175 years – lands on companies already running the numbers on whether California is worth the trouble.
AB 2599 Reparations Advocates Admit Slavery Disclosure Is Step One Toward Corporate Cash Payouts
The coalition behind AB 2599 isn't hiding what disclosure is designed to produce.
The Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation and Truth, the Equal Justice Society, and the California Black Power Network have all called the bill "a critical first step toward full accountability."
Full accountability means cash.
A company that signs a sworn affidavit admitting its 1890s predecessor issued insurance on enslaved people has just handed plaintiff attorneys a legally certified confession.
Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto.
This is the same man who already made California formally apologize for slavery and created an entire state bureau to hunt down reparations recipients.
California entered the Union as a free state in 1850 – it never had a plantation economy.
Sacramento just built a perjury enforcement apparatus around a history that barely crossed its own borders.
The companies that stayed in California through COVID lockdowns, through punishing tax hikes, through the regulatory pile-on, stayed because California was worth it.
Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee already have their welcome signs up.
Gavin Newsom built the California that drove Chevron to Texas after 140 years.
Sign AB 2599, and every CFO still in the state gets the same message: Sacramento will always find one more thing to take.
Sources:
- Mike LaChance, "SO DUMB: California Now Planning to Force Companies to Disclose 'Historic Links to Slavery,'" Gateway Pundit, August 31, 2026.
- "Blue State's Billionaire Exodus About to Get Much Worse in 2026, Insider Warns," Fox News, January 9, 2026.
- "Slew of Companies Leave California in 2025, Next Year Could Be Worse," The Real Deal, December 31, 2025.
- AB 2599, "Slavery: Corporate Disclosures," California Legislature, 2025–2026 Regular Session.