Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Wednesday giving California prosecutors broad new authority to challenge anticompetitive conduct by a single dominant company, marking one of the most significant changes to the state’s antitrust laws in more than a century.

Sean P. McConnell, chair of the antitrust and competition practice at Duane Morris LLP, similarly said the final legislation is substantially narrower than what lawmakers initially proposed.

“The enacted version is significantly narrower than the original bill, which would have introduced sweeping new theories including multi-firm monopolization, bans on cross-market balancing, and broad single-firm restraints of trade — all of which were removed,” McConnell said in an email.

But he cautioned against underestimating the law’s significance.

“AB 1776 is a significant expansion of California antitrust law...With four new antitrust laws in the last two years, California now arguably has one of the strongest state antitrust regimes in the country,” McConnell said.

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