{"id":8788,"date":"2026-09-09T19:42:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T19:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=8788"},"modified":"2026-09-09T19:42:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T19:42:45","slug":"taves-californias-legislature-just-armed-itself-to-actually-fight-inflation-big-biz-fought-them-tooth-and-nail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=8788","title":{"rendered":"Taves: California’s Legislature just armed itself to actually fight inflation. Big Biz fought them tooth and nail."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Late last month, California\u2019s legislators did the improbable:<\/p>\n

They stood up to the best-funded, most ruthless corporate lobbies in the state \u2014 the ones that spend millions on negative campaign ads when defied \u2014 and said, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Holy Score: BYU\u2019s first showdown arrives as coach Kalani Sitake\u2019s future looms over the season<\/a><\/p>\n

Assembly Bill 1776 was one among a flurry of new bills that passed the Legislature in the final days of the session last week. But this isn\u2019t like any other bill awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n

Introduced earlier this year by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), the COMPETE Act deserves extra attention. By expanding California antitrust law, the bill arms the state\u2019s attorney general and district attorneys with new powers to fight anti-competitive corporate behaviors supercharging inflation.<\/p>\n

Should it become law, this bill has the potential to deliver more than lip service in the affordability fight.<\/p>\n

Over the last four decades, only the top fifth of Californians have seen real income growth.<\/p>\n

Rising costs of health care, groceries, gas and housing have eroded whatever nominal income growth they\u2019ve eked out. Not coincidentally, these sectors, among others, have seen ownership consolidate, undermining competition for consumers and workers but rewarding shareholders handsomely.<\/p>\n

In health care, large hospitals have acquired an alarming number of primary-care and specialist practices. In agriculture, the number of farms has been shrinking while the remaining ones grow bigger. In energy, the number of operating refiners has collapsed by more than 85% over the last four decades. In housing, mega-mergers in the apartment sector are surging, putting swaths of the costliest coastal markets in the hands of a few landlords and management companies. After one Bay Area deal reported by this news organization last month, a single company now owns more than 180,000 rental units.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Exacerbating it all, new technologies, like AI, have allowed ostensibly competitive industries \u2014 think ones with thousands of owners like agriculture or the multifamily property sector \u2014 to share non-public, near real-time prices with each other and allegedly .<\/p>\n

But amid these changes, California\u2019s century-old antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, has stayed woefully stagnant and inadequate.<\/p>\n

That is changing. Finally.<\/p>\n

Over the last few sessions, the state\u2019s Democratic-controlled Legislature has introduced several bills all attempting to arrest the corporate subversion of the free market and bring the Cartwright Act into the 21st century.<\/p>\n

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Most have failed, killed off by intense pressure from Big Biz groups, whose lobbyists make clear to re-election-wary legislators they\u2019ll be on the business end of million-dollar ad campaigns.<\/p>\n

Despite their threats, a few bills have made it through. Last year, California passed AB 325, also written by Aguiar-Curry, regulating algorithmic collusion. But the Northern California Democrat\u2019s COMPETE Act, which passed the Assembly on Aug. 30 in a 60-16 vote, will likely prove far more significant because it applies to broader patterns of corporate behaviors.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) asked the California Law Revision Commission to review how the industrial-era Cartwright Act might be amended to combat anti-competitive practices in the post-industrial age.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, :<\/p>\n

While Cartwright bans anti-competitive behaviors by two or more companies working together, it does not apply to a single dominant firm acting alone. That loophole is problematic, the commission\u2019s lawyers argued, because of the market power of many of today\u2019s companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vertical integration of some of California\u2019s largest industries, as well as the sheer scale of certain digital platforms present unique competitive challenges not foreseen by the original antitrust law drafters,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

The federal Sherman Antitrust Act does, in fact, proscribe single-firm anticompetitive behavior. In fact, that gave the U.S. Justice Department the power to sue Microsoft in 1998 over its attempts to monopolize the internet browser market.<\/p>\n

So why update California law if federal law already bans it?<\/p>\n

Because federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court, have been gutting Sherman\u2019s scope for a generation.<\/p>\n

By putting a ban on anti-competitive actions of single firms into California law, the state could give itself a path to taking on monopolization without having to rely on increasingly unreliable federal courts.<\/p>\n

Read more Elizabeth Holmes invited Nathan Fielder to film her final days before prison. Things got weird.<\/a><\/p>\n

And the commission had another recommendation: Give California\u2019s suits against multiple firms acting anticompetitively a better shot in federal court if they end up there.<\/p>\n

By codifying that the Cartwright is \u201cbroader in range and deeper in reach than the federal Sherman Anti-Trust Act,\u201d the state would be telling federal judges not to assume this state\u2019s rules against collusion are the same as federal ones but are, in fact, far more sweeping.<\/p>\n

In other words, California should give itself a way to sue monopolistic practices in its own state court, and it should give itself a better shot at suing multiple firms colluding in federal court.<\/p>\n

The bill that Aguiar-Curry introduced earlier this year was modeled on the commission\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

Getting the bill passed, however, required weakening it first.<\/p>\n

Originally, AB 1776 included a private cause of action, meaning that companies, consumers and workers harmed by anti-competitive actions could file suit themselves. That would\u2019ve exponentially expanded its reach.<\/p>\n

But in the Senate, where the business lobby has more sway, it was amended, restricting enforcement to California\u2019s attorney general and district attorneys.<\/p>\n

Despite the Senate\u2019s amendments, Attorney General Rob Bonta \u2014 who has spent much of his first term in federal courts aggressively fighting several high-stakes antitrust battles \u2014 told this news organization AB 1776 might do more than just bring the state\u2019s laws in line with federal standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be more powerful than the Sherman Act, or differently powerful, and give us an opportunity to go after certain practices that maybe the Sherman Act doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Bonta during an interview last week.<\/p>\n

Translation: Antitrust suits that might fail in federal, or even state, court today could succeed tomorrow.<\/p>\n

For state Assemblymembers, Senators, lobbyists and legal analysts who closely tracked the bill through the Capitol, it\u2019s a surprise it passed at all given the ferocity of opposition from a who\u2019s who of current and aspiring monopolists, monopsonists and oligopolists.<\/p>\n

Associations for the state\u2019s bankers, broadcasters, grocers, hospitals and apartment owners \u2014 among many other de facto cartels all benefiting from weak antitrust laws \u2014 fought against it. (Consumer advocates, labor unions and small-business groups, however, did support it.)<\/p>\n

As the California Law Revision Commission was inviting experts far and wide to help the state update Cartwright and defend the free market, Big Biz lobbies provided little constructive input.<\/p>\n

Only once the commission had completed its recommendations and AB 1776 was written and moving through the Legislature did the California Chamber of Commerce get seriously involved. That Big Biz umbrella group, which likes masquerading as a champion of small businesses, launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to defeat the anti-anti-competition bill.<\/p>\n

CalChamber\u2019s message distilled down to this: Legislators who vote for AB 1776 aren\u2019t taming inflation. They\u2019re inflaming it. Californians can\u2019t afford this bill.<\/p>\n

No, they got it all backwards.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s consumers and workers can no longer afford to let the state\u2019s largest corporations continue writing the rules as they suffocate in increasingly uncompetitive markets strangled by consolidation, collusion and monopolization.<\/p>\n

Teddy Roosevelt learned that lesson a century ago, when it wasn\u2019t called socialism. It was called common-sense patriotism.<\/p>\n

Your move, Gov. Newsom.<\/p>\n

Sign the bill.<\/p>\n

Bay Area News Group Editorial Page Editor Max Taves can be reached at mtaves@bayareanewsgroup.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Golden State Warriors star making appearance at Valley Fair store<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If signed by Gov. Newsom, a just-passed bill would give the state new powers to fight anti-competitive companies exacerbating affordability<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nTaves: California’s Legislature just armed itself to actually fight inflation. 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