Legislators pull out big guns ahead of suspense decisions

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Hello and happy suspense file eve. 

In preparation for Thursday’s Senate and Assembly hearings, lawmakers have been making their last-minute pitches this week with back-to-back press conferences. After the final Senate appropriations hearing Monday morning, it’s really just a waiting game for hundreds of bills until the suspense file vote. 

Between the Senate and Assembly, we’re looking at more than 700 pieces of legislation on the chopping block. 

Here’s a few we’re following: 

Among the hundreds of bills heading to a suspense file vote, AB1776, authored by Assembly Member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters (Yolo County), is among the most closely watched. 

AB1776, the COMPETE Act, would significantly expand the Cartwright Act, a landmark regulation that governs California’s antitrust enforcement.

The bill would change the parameters of antitrust liability, making it possible to go after single-firm businesses engaging in anticompetitive practices. The existing regulations require two or more businesses to be involved to trigger the antitrust regulations. 

In any circumstance, it’s an ambitious effort. Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions (and a former chair of the Assembly appropriations committee), said during a news conference at the Capitol Wednesday morning: “This is a tough bill.” It’s made all the tougher by a large opposition campaign mounted by the California Chamber of Commerce and recent statements from the Department of Finance that further call the bill’s future into question.

At the final Senate appropriations hearing on Monday, a representative from the Department of Finance testified against the bill, citing its potential costs. 

Christian Beltran, legislative director from the Department of Finance, told the committee that the Department of Justice has indicated the bill “may create unknown but potentially significant costs” for the agency to “investigate and prosecute violators of single firm antitrust law.”

“A major unknown cost driver is the number of cases the DOJ will litigate under this new authority,” Beltran said. “It is unclear if the unfair competition law fund and the antitrust account would be able to absorb these costs.” 

While there is no official estimate of the law’s impact on trial courts, Beltran said, it could result in an increase in the number of cases filed. 

This potential for an increase in lawsuits has been a recurring sticking point as the bill has moved through committees the last several weeks. In response, Aguiar-Curry has accepted multiple amendments, and reiterated her willingness to tweak the bill to address concerns. But with next week’s amendments deadline, AB1776 is coming up against multiple pressure points. 

So it’s no surprise that the bill’s supporters organized a rowdy and star-studded press conference Tuesday. Dolores Huerta spoke in support of the legislation, as did several labor leaders, including Gonzalez, other state lawmakers backing the bill and a few small business owners who said they’d been directly harmed by what they called monopolistic behavior by large corporations. 

Many of the speakers described the bill in almost existential terms, casting it as a necessary tool to fight back against large corporations, corporate greed, affordability issues and business inequity. 

“Something is happening to our money, but it's more than just inflation. It's the sense that we're all getting scammed,” said Assembly Member Liz Ortega, D-San Leandro, touting AB1776 as an effort to fight back against big corporations. 

The change to the state’s Cartwright Act in AB1776 was recommended by the California Law Revision Commission, an independent state agency, after undertaking a three-year review of the state’s antitrust laws. Supporters say single companies are engaging in monopolistic behavior that severely undermines the state’s small businesses, pointing to a range of industries such as food, manufacturing and healthcare.

CalChamber has led the opposition, and earlier this summer highlighted AB1776 as its No. 1 legislative priority. The business advocacy group launched a multimillion-dollar effort to oppose the bill last month, including by launching a 30-second ad claiming AB1776 would create a financial cudgel that would harm both consumers and businesses by exposing companies to “frivolous lawsuits” and new regulations. 

“California's Cartwright Act was written in 1907,” Aguiar-Curry said on Tuesday, flanked by dozens of supporters. “Hello, people. Things have changed. Open up your eyes. Have a vision. It’s a different economy [that] we are in.”

One sure-fire way to bring some attention to a bill? Bring in a celebrity. 

It’s not a new approach by any means, but it’s always an interesting disruption to the usual cast of characters who lend their voice to bills during the end-of-session crunch time. 

This week, actor Hilary Swank advocated for AB1901, which would mandate diaper manufacturers to disclose the ingredients in their products. 

The bill’s author, Assembly Member Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, said he began to wonder what chemicals and additives might be in diapers earlier this year after becoming a new father. 

Swank backed a similar disclosure bill in 2025, SB646, which requires prenatal vitamins manufactures to start testing their products for heavy metals and disclose their testing practices to consumers, starting next year.

Both are part of a trend of bills requiring the disclosure of ingredients for various consumer products, as concerns over harmful chemical exposure have become more mainstream. 

Recent laws in the last several years have required greater transparency for cleaning products, cosmetics, menstrual products, cookware and food. 

As for the other celeb-backed bills … 

Last week, Emma Heming Willis, wife to actor Bruce Willis, made an appearance at the Capitol to throw her support behind SB1047. The bill, introduced by Sens. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, would require the California Neurodegenerative Disease Registry to begin collecting data on frontotemporal degeneration, or FTD, diagnoses across the state. FTD, which Bruce Willis was diagnosed with in early 2023, is the most common dementia for people under 60, according to researchers.

Sens. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, and Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, are also leveraging a well-known name this session. They’re behind SB1392, which they’ve named “Jay Leno’s Law,” which would extend California’s smog check exemption to some classic and collectible cars made between 1976 and 1985. 

Unfortunately, the car-obsessed talk show host is not on the guest list for SB1392’s Wednesday news conference. 

All three – AB1901, SB1047 and SB1392, are awaiting Thursday’s suspense file hearing.

Questions? Thoughts? Interesting tidbits to share? Reach out at [email protected], and follow me on X, @KathrynPlmr.