By SDCN Staff
Sacramento, CA–Governor Gavin Newsom announced he has signed new legislation to level the playing field for California’s small businesses, cut red tape, strengthen competition, and give entrepreneurs more tools to open businesses, grow, and succeed.
The new laws are intended to address concerns about market monopolies, encourage the use of vacant storefronts for pop-up businesses, streamline commercial permitting, and provide additional protections for businesses from certain financial practices. Supporters say the measures could make California’s economy more accessible to consumers, workers, and small-business owners.
California should be a place where our small businesses, workers, and entrepreneurs get a fair shot, and where consumers aren’t held hostage by companies that have crushed their competition and can now raise prices unchecked,” said Assembly Majority Leader Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters). I celebrate successful businesses, big and small. But when a corporation stops competing by offering the best product or service and instead uses its power to crush competitors, the government has a responsibility to step in.”
New legislation signed by the governor is expected to affect small businesses across the state, including provisions related to business operations, costs, and economic development.
- Making a major update to California’s antitrust and consumer protection laws. Clamping down on anti-competitive behavior, encouraging competition, and expanding opportunities for entrepreneurs and workers — including by creating new authority for the Attorney General and district attorneys to combat monopolistic behavior while also protecting small businesses.
- Requiring cities to create a new permit that allows pop-up businesses to operate in vacant stores for up to 120 days, helping to drive up foot traffic and expand opportunities for small businesses.
- Streamlining qualifying small business tenant-improvement permits by requiring local governments to provide applicants with a plan-check timeline and, when review is excessively delayed, allowing specified small businesses to use approved third-party plan checkers to review building plans and help them get permits and open their doors faster.
- Helping retailers open and operate faster by allowing businesses undertaking certain tenant improvements to hire qualified architects or engineers to review and certify that building plans comply with life-safety, health, and building code requirements.
- Giving Californians more flexibility and convenience by allowing restaurants and bars to continue offering cocktails to-go.
- Protecting small businesses from abusive financial practices by unscrupulous financing companies.
“California didn’t become the fourth-largest economy in the world by chance. We got here because of the innovators, risk-takers, and entrepreneurs who started small and helped build this state from the ground up. Today we’re leveling the playing field for small businesses by making it easier to open and expand businesses, cutting red tape, and protecting competition, We’re taking on predatory practices that drive up costs and shut entrepreneurs out — making sure California’s economy works for everyone, not just the biggest and best-connected,” Governor Gavin Newsom stated in a release.
New legislation signed by Newsom is expected to affect small businesses across the state, including provisions related to business operations, costs, and economic development.
California’s annual GDP has grown by more than $1.18 trillion, reaching $4.25 trillion in 2025. First-quarter 2026 economic output reached an annualized $4.4 trillion, following annual GDP gains exceeding $200 billion in each of the previous two years, according to state officials.
The state also remains home to more small businesses than Texas or Florida, and continues to be America’s startup capital — with more than 4.3 million small businesses employing 7.6 million Californians.
As the world’s fourth-largest economy, California continues to lead the nation where it matters most — creating new businesses, attracting venture capital, driving technological innovation, expanding advanced manufacturing, growing high-tech industries, and producing more than any other state.
