California COMPETE Act extends Cartwright Act to single-firm conduct
Governor Newsom signed AB 1776 on September 30, 2026, amending California's Cartwright Act to reach single-firm conduct, sharpening monopolization exposure for companies selling into the state.
On September 30, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1776, the Competition and Opportunity in Markets for a Prosperous, Equitable and Transparent Economy Act, amending the state's principal antitrust statute, the Cartwright Act, to address single-firm conduct.
Historically, California's Cartwright Act has been read narrowly as reaching agreements and restraints on trade; monopolization-type liability has generally been litigated in California under the state UCL and federal Sherman Act rather than Cartwright itself. An amendment expressly capturing unilateral conduct would change that baseline, and would sit alongside California's existing UCL monopolization doctrine (A.B.C. Concepts and the Brooke Group line of authority). Counsel should note that the alert reviewed here does not set out the statute's operative subsections, the conduct standards or defenses it supplies, or its effective date and retroactivity provisions, so the precise scope of the new standard is not established on this material.
Why it matters: California is a large, concentrated market for platform, tech, retail, healthcare and logistics businesses. A broader state-law route to single-firm relief adds parallel exposure alongside federal antitrust claims, potentially in the same case.
Action: read the enacted text, assess market-share and conduct exposure for California-facing businesses, and watch for implementing litigation or coalition challenges that will define the standard.