Update
Pursuant to the Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction (PDF) filed June 2, 2022 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, Case No. 20STCV37513 and the Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction (PDF) filed July 15, 2022 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, Case No. 19STCV27561, the Secretary of State is enjoined and prohibited from expending or causing any expenditure of the estate, funds, or other property of the State on California Corporations Code sections 301.3, 301.4, 2115.5 and 2115.6 (the "Diversity on Boards" statutes). The Secretary of State's office is not currently collecting data related to Diversity on Boards, and the Publicly Traded Disclosure Statement has been revised to remove the four data fields which collected such data.
In 2018, Women on Boards (SB 826) was signed into law to advance equitable gender representation on California corporate boards. California led the way as the first state in the nation to require all publicly held domestic or foreign corporations whose principal executive offices are located in California to have at least one female director on their boards by December 31, 2019, either by filling an open seat or by adding a seat. By December 31, 2021, such publicly held corporations were required to have minimum numbers of female directors based on the total size of the corporation's board of directors.
Women on Boards is an important step in diversity and inclusion, as well as for the advancement of women. When Women on Boards passed in 2018, one-fourth of California’s publicly held corporations had no women directors on their boards. The Secretary of State's office is tasked to review and issue reports regarding the corporations' compliance with the bill’s provisions.
