(Bloomberg) -- A lawyer for California urging a judge to uphold the state’s diversity requirement for company boards said women may have to wait as long as 70 years to gain equal representation with male directors without prodding from government.

A quarter of California-based companies in the Russell 2000 index had no women on their boards in 2016, Ashante Norton, lawyer for the secretary of state, said in her closing argument at the end of a trial. And among the largest companies listing on a stock exchange for the first time, almost half went public between 2014 and 2016 with no female representation, she said.

California became the first state to set a minimum standard for female representation on boards, requiring companies with four or fewer directors to have one female, those with five directors to have two women and those with six or more directors to have at least three women on their boards. But the law is being challenged by taxpayers who claim it violates the state constitution’s equal protection clause.

“That is a pernicious quota, nothing else,” Robert Sticht, lawyer for Judicial Watch which sued on behalf of three taxpayers, told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis at a hearing Wednesday. Duffy-Lewis is hearing the challenge without a jury and will rule on the lawsuit.

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Judicial Watch is also challenging a separate California law requiring more racial diversity on boards. That trial is scheduled to start in Los Angeles later this year.

While the state is defending the law requiring more women on boards, Norton admitted the legislation has no real teeth.

“The Secretary of State hasn’t drafted regulations and has no plan to draft regulations,” she said. “There is no plan to implement regulations on monetary fines.”

In addition, companies that don’t comply with the law won’t lose government contracts, and those that do comply won’t be given preferential treatment when government contracts are handed out, Norton said.

Norton was trying to fend off Judicial Watch’s allegation that the law violates a provision of the state’s constitution which prohibits giving preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of sex in awarding public contracts.

Sticht asked the judge to declare the law invalid and to prohibit the state from spending any money to implement or enforce it.

Duffy-Lewis directed the lawyers to file additional briefs by March 11, and she will rule after that.

Norton cited numerous statistics showing women are underrepresented on company boards and that those companies with more female representation outperform those with fewer women.

She noted that Calpers, the state’s biggest pension fund, invests $22 billion in companies based in California.

“The better those perform, the better it is for retirees,” she said.

But Sticht rejected outright the state’s argument that women have been discriminated against for decades because board seats are awarded secretly primarily by men who appoint people they know and like, and who look like them.

“That’s a leap by a mud turtle across an entire pond,” Sticht told the judge.

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