It’s a battle that plays out in Sacramento nearly every year, sometimes over the same issues for decades running. The specific bills change, but the basic tension does not: advocacy groups pushing new rules they say protect workers, shoppers or the environment, and business leaders warning that those same rules will drive up costs and chase companies out of the state.

With the two-year legislative session winding down, several bills born out of this rivalry remain in play, and both sides are working hard to shape how they turn out.

One closely watched measure is Assembly Bill 2564, introduced by Assemblymember Christopher Ward, a San Diego Democrat, at the request of labor unions, consumer organizations and groups representing low-income Californians. The bill would ban a practice known as “surveillance pricing,” in which retailers use shoppers’ personal data to set individualized prices through algorithms.

Supporters argue the practice can lead to unfair or discriminatory pricing and should be curbed. Retailers counter that the bill’s language is broad enough to wipe out common discount programs, including coupons and loyalty rewards, ultimately making everyday purchases more expensive in a state already known for its high cost of living.

A bigger fight, at least in terms of its potential impact on California’s business climate, centers on Assembly Bill 1776, authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat. The bill would expand the reach of California’s century-old Cartwright Act, the state’s primary antitrust law, which has allowed legal action against companies that collude to squeeze out competitors and inflate prices since 1907.

AB 1776 would go further, permitting legal action against companies that achieve market dominance even without engaging in collusion. The idea grew out of a recommendation from the California Law Revision Commission, which argued the original law never anticipated the kind of market concentration seen in today’s economy. The bill has drawn support from a broad coalition of consumer groups and labor organizations.

Business advocates, led by the California Chamber of Commerce, see it differently. They argue the bill would expose companies to lawsuits simply for succeeding in the marketplace through legitimate competition, rather than through any wrongdoing.

An earlier version of the bill would have let private attorneys file lawsuits under the law on their own initiative — a provision critics considered especially dangerous because of the potential flood of litigation it could unleash. That language was stripped out after the bill cleared the Assembly on a narrow vote and headed to the Senate, meaning enforcement would now fall to the state attorney general or local prosecutors rather than private lawyers.

Even with that change, the Chamber remains firmly opposed. In a statement, spokesperson John Myers said the bill’s backers have yet to identify any concrete examples of the market behavior they’re trying to stop.

“The author and sponsors of AB 1776 have never brought forward specific, real-world examples of the behavior they are seeking to change,” Myers said. “That’s why we’ve often seen this as a ‘solution in search of a problem,’ the kind of fundamental flaw that makes legislative negotiations extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

Regardless of how these bills — and several others caught in the same crossfire — fare before the August 31 deadline, the underlying struggle between business interests and their perennial opponents is far from finished. Lawmakers will pick it back up when they return to Sacramento in December, joined by a handful of new legislators and, come January, a newly inaugurated governor.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Business Regulation Battles Intensify in Sacramento as Legislative Session Winds Down appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The bill, authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat, would make it easier to sue companies in state court over alleged anti-competitive behavior. Under the measure, individuals and businesses who believe they’ve been harmed by a company’s efforts to squash competition could bring their own legal action, rather than relying solely on state or federal regulators to step in. Smaller firms — those with 100 or fewer employees and average annual gross receipts of at least $10 million over the past three years — would be shielded from the law.

Supporters argue the change is overdue. Aguiar-Curry and other backers point to federal antitrust enforcement, which they say has grown increasingly passive even as entire sectors of the American economy have consolidated into the hands of a few dominant players. More than three-quarters of U.S. industries have seen this kind of consolidation since the late 1990s, according to the assemblymember.

“When companies gain that much power and abuse it, that means higher prices, less choice, fewer opportunities for job creators to start small businesses and suppressed wages for working families,” Aguiar-Curry told colleagues during a June hearing.

But the proposal has run into resistance from business groups, who warn it would expose companies to a wave of costly litigation and give what they call predatory law firms a new avenue to pressure businesses into settlements. Several moderate Democrats have echoed those concerns, saying the bill could make California an even tougher place to operate a business.

“We want to make sure that we are not stifling competition by virtue of the threat of lawsuits,” said state Sen. Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat.

Umberg was among lawmakers who declined to cast a vote when the bill came before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June. He joined 16 Assembly Democrats who similarly withheld support during an earlier floor vote in May. The measure now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee, where its fate remains uncertain as lawmakers continue to weigh consumer protection against the concerns of the business community.

For Inland Empire and Southern California business owners watching the debate, the outcome could carry real consequences — either a stronger avenue for challenging monopolistic practices that squeeze out competitors, or a new source of legal exposure that adds to the cost of doing business in the state.

In other Sacramento news, the University of California is pushing back on reports suggesting it has abandoned plans to reconsider the SAT for undergraduate admissions. UC officials say a fresh evaluation of the test’s role remains on the table, even as the original timeline has shifted. The clarification comes amid growing pressure from some faculty members who want the test reinstated, arguing it offers a valuable, consistent benchmark for incoming students — particularly those pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. The UC Board of Regents eliminated the SAT requirement in 2020 amid concerns it disadvantaged low-income applicants, and only the regents have the authority to bring it back.

Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court is preparing to hear a series of cases challenging the use of undercover jailhouse informants, a controversial law enforcement technique known as a Perkins operation. Critics say the tactic — in which agents posing as fellow inmates, often larger and more experienced than their targets, attempt to elicit confessions — is coercive and falls disproportionately on Black and Latino defendants. A CalMatters investigation found that among cases now before the state’s high court, defendants are split among Hispanic, Black and white individuals, but a broader review of murder cases from 2015 to 2023 found Black defendants were targeted for these stings more than four times as often as white defendants.

Original source: CalMatters

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