On September 30, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed
into law Assembly Bill 979 (AB 979), an act that promises to
greatly increase the diversity of the board of directors of a
number of California-based publicly-traded corporations.
AB 979 follows in the footsteps of Senate Bill 826 (SB 826), a
2018 bill signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, which requires
that all publicly traded corporations listed on a major U.S. stock
exchange headquartered in the state of California (per the
corporation's SEC 10-K filing) have a "representative
number" of women as members of their board of directors. SB
826 required that all such corporations have at least one woman on
their board of directors by December 31, 2019, and at least two (if
such corporation has five directors) or three (if such corporation
has six or more directors) female directors by December 31, 2021.
SB 826 further requires that the California Secretary of State
report annually on the number of
