California is one of only four states without a ban on illegal monopolies. It’s an increasingly perilous proposition for state enforcement officials, amid federal chaos and the rise of corporate power in numerous industries. For the past two years, the California Law Revision Commission — a state body tasked by lawmakers to review various statutes — has explored whether and how to amend the state’s antitrust law, known as the Cartwright Act, to include a ban on illegal monopolies, anticompetitive mergers, and other anticompetitive conduct. ILSR’s Ron Knox has worked alongside local and national allies to push the Commission to recommend changes to lawmakers that would strengthen and clarify state antitrust law, helping workers, small businesses, shoppers, and communities resist corporate control and reap the benefits of competitive industries.
The Commission’s investigation, along with the advocacy work of ILSR and allies, comes at a crucial time. California is the largest “sub-national” economy in the world, accounting for nearly $4 trillion in GDP in 2023. However, as with the rest of the country, corporate concentration is rising in California, as the Commission’s investigation found. With significant regression in views on corporate power within the federal antitrust enforcers, strengthening California’s ability to stop monopoly abuses and bad mergers is more essential than ever.
ILSR, alongside nearly a dozen other local and national allies, has submitted multiple reports, comment letters, and testimony to the Commission during the years-long investigation. That includes an extensive report, led by Economic Security California Action, for which Knox was the lead author of the merger control section. ILSR also partnered on a letter pushing the Commission to recommend a strong merger control law that would allow California to better enforce against corporate abuses; and led on a letter, co-signed by eight California and national partner organizations, urging the California Law Revision Commission to adopt a standard for defining market power in the state. Knox also spoke before the Commission in September, advocating for strong recommendations on new monopolization and misuse-of-market-power laws.
This work is now coming to a head. At its next meeting in December, the commission is expected to finalize its proposed single firm conduct recommendations to lawmakers, and potentially make further recommendations for a new merger control law in the state. Those recommendations, while not binding, are significant for lawmakers. Historically, the state legislature has adopted 90 percent of the Commission’s recommended statutory changes.
Watch Ron Knox’s testimony below or on YouTube.
Ron Knox“It is important to recognize that some corporations have power, and when they have that power there is an opportunity to abuse that power in ways that harm the competitive process and competitors and consumers and everybody else.”
Ron Knox joined fellow advocates to demonstrate how the state can bolster its antitrust laws to benefit California citizens.
A bill in the Rhode Island House could level the state's grocery playing field, and encourage other states to join the fight against monopoly power.
Ron Knox testified in support of a proposed bill that would strictly prohibit corporations from using monopoly power to abuse workers, small businesses and consumers.
Ron Knox explains the rise of trustbusting at the state level in the face of federal regulatory chaos.