Via Liz Dunshee, Keith Paul Bishop remarks on the California board gender quota law:
I blogged a few weeks ago that only 318 companies that are subject to California’s board diversity statute have filed a disclosure statement to report whether or not they have the required number of women on their board. I was surprised by that – but Allen Matkins’ Keith Bishop sent this point of clarification:
The statutes requiring publicly traded corporations to file the Corporate Disclosure Statement predate the statutes relating to board composition. There is no specific fine associated with failure to file the Corporate Disclosure Statement in those statutes.
The statutes governing board composition provide that the Secretary of State may impose a $100,000 fine for failure to file to timely file board member information with the Secretary of State pursuant to a regulation. However, the Secretary of State has not adopted a regulation and is not required to do so (the statutes say that the Secretary of State “may” adopt implementing regulations).
I am not aware of any enforcement activity by the Secretary of State for actual violations of the composition requirements. Any enforcement action is likely to be defended on constitutional grounds and that is already being litigated in state and federal court.
Keith also went on to say that his understanding is that the Secretary of State compiles the data for the report solely from the Form 10-K and Corporate Disclosure Statements. Through no fault of their own, but because of how the statute is worded, they do not look at proxies or other disclosures made by a company. That reinforces that the corporate disclosure statements – and the “Women on Boards” report – isn’t all that useful in analyzing whether companies headquartered in California are satisfying the underlying board diversity requirements in the statute. As Keith explained in a recent blog, companies are permitted to file updated disclosure statements – but it’s not required.
But maybe it doesn't matter. Dunshee continues:
Cooley’s Cydney Posner did pull up a few proxy statements – this blog summarizes her findings:
Should we assume that companies that did not file are not in compliance? I looked at the proxy statements for a number of the companies identified as “impacted corporations” that nevertheless were not reported as having filed Disclosure Statements — selected at random, unscientifically and completely arbitrarily — all of them had at least one woman on the board and often two or more. So, I would guess that the number of women on boards is probably much greater than the report indicates.
Unfortunately, however, to compile the report, the Secretary can’t simply look at companies’ proxy statements as I did. That’s because the language in the statute defines “female” as “an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.” As a result, the Secretary is not reviewing 10-Ks or proxy statements to determine whether a company is compliant with the new board composition requirement, but is instead determining compliance based only on the California Statement, which includes a specific inquiry regarding the number of “female” directors. And if half the companies subject to the law don’t file, well, so much for the accuracy of the report.
It’s also worth noting that there are timing issues in connection with these annual reports and statements, resulting in “some gaps in available data” in the 2021 Report, as the report points out. Forms 10-K are due, generally depending on the size of the company’s public float, 60, 75 or 90 days after the end of the company’s fiscal year, and the deadline for filing the California Statement is 150 days after the end of the company’s fiscal year.
