Press Release

California Senate Votes to End a Century of Monopoly Impunity

08. 30. 2026

SACRAMENTO – Today, the California Senate advanced the COMPETE Act (AB 1776), authored by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, sending it back to the Assembly for concurrence. The legislation updates California’s 119-year-old antitrust statute to stop monopoly abuse and close the loophole that lets dominant corporations rig the market against small businesses, workers, and families. The bill gives California’s attorney general and district attorneys the tool to hold these dominant corporations accountable when they cause harm.

Teri Olle, Vice President of Economic Security California Action, issued the following statement:

“Today the Senate doubled down on the promise of California’s economy. Legislators made it clear that the monopolies don’t get to write their own rules anymore. 

“By voting to pass AB 1776, our Senators stood up to the Chamber of Commerce and their allies, despite the millions of dollars they spent trying to kill the bill. Our legislators looked past the ads and the lobbyists, looked at what the COMPETE Act actually does, and voted to give California the strongest tools against monopoly abuse it has had in more than a century. The Chamber bet that stripping one enforcement mechanism would be enough to kill this bill. They were wrong. They spent those millions telling legislators that Californians do not need protection from monopoly abuse. The Senate did not buy it. What is going to the Governor is a bill that lets California’s attorney general and district attorneys go after the dominant corporations that block competitors, squeeze out small businesses, suppress wages, and drive up prices. 

“This moment is massive. The road to arrive at this legislation was long, and the campaign hotly contested in the halls of Sacramento. The grounding of this policy comes out of three years of expert review and a unanimous recommendation from the California Law Revision Commission. California’s antitrust law was written in 1907. It has not been meaningfully updated since, even as a handful of corporations amassed enough power to set the terms of the Golden State’s economy.

“The COMPETE Act does not punish a company for being big or successful; it simply says that you can’t use your power in a market to ice out your competition and charge whatever you please. Going after monopolies who use their power to move the market in their favor is the right thing to do. It levels the playing field for the mom-and-pop bookstore, for the local and unique stationary store, for the garage tech startup, and it will make a meaningful difference for every family staring at rising costs of groceries, gas, and medical bills thanks to monopoly abuses.

“We thank Assembly Majority Leader Aguiar-Curry for her stalwart leadership, the members of the Senate who stood up for California small businesses, consumers and workers, and our coalition partners who have been in this fight from day one. Now we urge the Assembly to agree and send the COMPETE Act to Governor Newsom’s desk for his immediate signature.”