Press Release

New Report Proposes Updated Framework for CA Antitrust Law to Tackle Corporate Power, Protect Consumers & Workers, and Restore Fair Markets

05. 21. 2025

SACRAMENTO, CA — As unchecked corporate consolidation deepens inequality and drives up costs across California, a new report released today urges sweeping reforms to the state’s outdated antitrust framework. The report is authored by a collection of experts, led by Economic Security California Action, and published alongside partners from the American Economic Liberties Project, California Nurses Association, Democracy Policy Network, End Poverty In California, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Liberation in a Generation, Rise Economy, Tech Equity Action, and the UFCW Western States Council. “Updating California’s Antitrust Law to Promote a Vibrant, Inclusive, and Competitive State Economy” presents a timely, actionable roadmap to confront monopoly power, protect workers, and restore economic fairness across the state.

“California’s economy has been distorted by a handful of dominant corporations in every sector of the market—leading to higher prices, fewer choices, and less power for all of us,” said Teri Olle, Director of Economic Security California. “This report delivers the tools lawmakers need to rebalance our markets and empower workers, small businesses, and communities.”

The report comes out as the California Law Revision Commission (CLRC) concludes two years of study, which revealed a stark truth: current state law is ill-equipped to curb monopolization or blunt the misuse of market power. Today, three health insurers control 80% of California’s market. Four companies dominate up to 85% of meat processing. And 60% of U.S. labor markets are “highly concentrated,” driving down wages and worker mobility.

“This isn’t just about economics—it’s about power,” Olle added. “Antitrust reform is key to building a democracy where markets serve people, not the other way around.”

A Clear Legislative Path Forward

The report outlines critical reforms for California lawmakers to both update the state’s Cartwright Act, the 100+  year old antitrust statute, and further proposes reforms that would encourage competitive, fair, and functioning markets:

• Modernize the Cartwright Act  to reach the conduct of single firms, and define specific tactics by dominant firms—such as exclusive dealing, tying, or “catch-and-kill” acquisitions—as presumptively anticompetitive to prevent monopolization through abuse of market power.
• Create state-level merger protections that allow the state to block harmful deals, especially in regional or sector-specific markets, before consolidation drives out competition and raises consumer prices.
• Empower state enforcement by creating new tools to detect and stop coordinated pricing, collusion, and the use of algorithms to fix markets behind digital walls.
• Safeguard workers’ freedom and wages by prohibiting exploitative employment restrictions like TRAPs (training repayment schemes) and no-poach agreements, and ensuring labor impacts are assessed in merger decisions.
• Apply antitrust scrutiny to tech and AI firms to prevent platform monopolies from manipulating digital markets, distorting competition, or using algorithms to entrench dominance.
• Increase enforcement transparency and accountability to ensure that laws are not only on the books, but enforced fairly and effectively.

Together, these reforms aim to align California’s antitrust laws with the realities of a 21st-century economy dominated by mega-corporations and platform monopolies.

“When power is concentrated among a few corporations, and corporations become even less accountable to working people, our communities all suffer. Right now, as nurses experience in the health care industry, employers have so much power and control of the market that they can suppress wages, reduce benefits, bust unions, and impose unfavorable working conditions because workers have limited bargaining power or no alternative employment options,” said Carmen Comsti Assistant Director of Government Relations of the California Nurses Association. “To protect workers’ bargaining power and for a stronger California, we need to update our antitrust framework.”

California’s Opportunity to Lead

As the fourth-largest economy in the world, California has a historic opportunity to lead a broader national movement for antimonopoly reform and to be the model for a flourishing, competitive economy. With federal enforcement happening in the courts, and no clear antitrust platform from the White House or Congress, the state can serve as a model for proactive, people-centered economic governance. Out of this moment of economic instability, California can chart a path back to reliance on robust competition to achieve greater choices and better prices for consumers, job markets where workers have a say in where they apply their labor, and fertile and fair ground for small businesses to start new ventures.

A PDF of the full report is available here and a synopsis of the key recommendations from Economic Security Project is available at economicsecurityproject.org/resource/time-to-reset/.