Ethics Newsline®

CHICAGO
Chicago last week became the first major U.S. city to require all companies with city contracts to disclose whether they or their firms’ predecessors profited from slavery, warning that businesses would lose contracts for lying.

The ordinance, passed on a unanimous 44-to-0 vote by the city council last week, would not punish firms that did profit from slavery, but would simply collect the information in a database.

Firms that lie and deny any involvement in the slave trade will be stripped of their contracts with the city, reported the Chicago Tribune.

The measure is aimed at collecting data for use in future lawsuits aimed at assessing and recovering reparations for African-Americans, according to its author, Dorothy Tillman.

“I believe people would like to know if a corporation they’re contemplating doing business with has its roots in trading in human cargo,” Tillman told the Associated Press.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley agreed, saying the measure “will not prevent companies from doing business with the city, but it will shed a light on slavery.”

Robert Bennett, former dean of Northwestern University Law School, said the Chicago measure may be well intentioned, but could run into problems down the road.

“If they start threatening companies … then we may be talking about extortion,” Bennett told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a public interest in having history about slavery, but this is a strange way of going about compiling that history.”

California passed a similar measure two years ago, although that legislation applies only to insurance companies doing business in the state.