ARTICLE
21 July 2025

Legal Questions For Your Sustainability Team #1

JD
Jones Day

Contributor

Jones Day is a global law firm with more than 2,500 lawyers across five continents. The Firm is distinguished by a singular tradition of client service; the mutual commitment to, and the seamless collaboration of, a true partnership; formidable legal talent across multiple disciplines and jurisdictions; and shared professional values that focus on client needs.
This series of posts seeks to identify legal questions that can add definition and value to the good work that sustainability teams are doing.
United States California Corporate/Commercial Law

This series of posts seeks to identify legal questions that can add definition and value to the good work that sustainability teams are doing.

Ask if your sustainability team handling the climate-related financial disclosure report required by California Health and Safety Code Section 28533 has done a scoping exercise to identify the specific entities in the enterprise that do business in California and have at least $500 million of revenue (regardless of whether the revenue is from California sales). "Doing business in California" is likely to be determined with reference to California state tax code provisions that look at sales, real property and employees in California, which are relatively modest. However, not every entity that is part of an enterprise will necessarily be doing business in California. For example, entities that focus on business in the EU or Asia may have no contact with California and may not be covered as a result.

"Covered entity" means a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, or other business entity formed under the laws of the state, the laws of any other state of the United States or the District of Columbia, or under an act of the Congress of the United States with total annual revenues in excess of five hundred million United States dollars ($500,000,000) and that does business in California. Applicability shall be determined based on the business entity's revenue for the prior fiscal year.

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/...

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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