More US States are pushing on with new Privacy Legislation

3. January 2020

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) came into effect on January 1, 2020 and will be the first step in the United States in regulating data privacy on the Internet. Currently, the US does not have a federal-level general consumer data privacy law that is comparable to that of the privacy laws in EU countries or even the supranational European GDPR.

But now, several other US States have taken inspiration from the CCPA and are in the process of bringing forth their own state legislation on consumer privacy protections on the Internet, including

  • The Massachusetts Data Privacy Law “S-120“,
  • The New York Privacy Act “S5642“,
  • The Hawaii Consumer Privacy Protection Act “SB 418“,
  • The Maryland Online Consumer Protection Act “SB 613“, and
  • The North Dakota Bill “HB 1485“.

Like the CCPA, most of these new privacy laws have a broad definition of the term “Personal Information” and are aimed at protecting consumer data by strenghtening consumer rights.

However, the various law proposals differ in the scope of the consumer rights. All of them grant consumers the ‘right to access’ their data held by businesses. There will also be a ‘right to delete’ in most of these states, but only some give consumers a private ‘right of action’ for violations.

There are other differences with regards to the businesses that will be covered by the privacy laws. In some states, the proposed laws will apply to all businesses, while in other states the laws will only apply to businesses with yearly revenues of over 10 or 25 Million US-Dollars.

As more US states are beginning to introduce privacy laws, there is an increasing possiblity of a federal US privacy law in the near future. Proposals from several members of Congress already exist (Congresswomen Eshoo and Lofgren’s Proposal and Senators Cantwell/Schatz/Klobuchar/Markey’s Proposal and Senator Wicker’s Proposal).