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On June 14, 2021, the Board of the newly-formed California Privacy Protection Agency (“CPPA”) held its first public meeting.  The Board had an extensive agenda, covering topics such as the laws affecting the Board and CPPA, initial hiring strategy for the CPPA, policies and practices on delegations of authority and conflicts of interest, establishment of subcommittees of the Board, notice to the Attorney General regarding the assumption of rulemaking under the California Privacy Rights Act (the “CPRA”), and setting future agenda items and a meeting schedule for the Board.  (As a refresher, when the CPRA passed as a ballot measure last Fall, it established the CPPA as a first-of-its-kind agency solely devoted to the regulation and enforcement of consumer privacy.  The CPPA is tasked with enforcing the CPRA and developing a set of regulations providing guidance for businesses on how to comply with that new law.  For more on the CPRA, please see our post here.)

While the CPPA Board’s June 14 full-day meeting covered a lot of ground, it is clear there is much work to be done for the CPPA to emerge as an independent, fully-functional agency, let alone promulgating regulations in time to meet the CPRA’s July 1, 2022 deadline for final regulations.  Overall, the Board members appeared to be committed to working through these challenges, but acknowledged that they are under a lot of time pressure.

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Continue Reading Starting at the Beginning: California Privacy Protection Agency Board Meets for the First Time

In Part II of this series, California-based Ali Baiardo, and London-based Alice O’Donovan, continue their comparison of the GDPR and California privacy law. To view Part I in the series, click here.

NEW DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES AND OBLIGATIONS ON BUSINESSES

a. Key data protection principles

The GDPR revolves around seven key data protection principles:

  1. Lawfulness, fairness and transparency;
  2. Purpose limitation;
  3. Data minimisation;
  4. Accuracy;
  5. Storage limitation;
  6. Integrity and confidentiality (security); and
  7. Accountability

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Continue Reading California Privacy Rights Act: A Move Closer to GDPR? Part II

The recently-passed California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) augments and supplements California’s existing privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).  We are sure many practitioners are wondering how it stacks up with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). See below for Part I of our two part series comparing the CPRA and the GDPR (and see Part II here).

HOW DOES THE CPRA CHANGE THE CCPA?

The CPRA makes several significant changes to the CCPA:

  • It introduces the concept of “sensitive personal data”;
  • It introduces new obligations on businesses, and GDPR-style “principles”;
  • It introduces new rights for consumers; and
  • It creates a new supervisory authority for data protection and privacy in California — the California Privacy Protection Agency.

These changes are very significant – but do they represent a move closer to GDPR, or a move away?

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Continue Reading California Privacy Rights Act: A Move Closer to GDPR? Part I

The November 2020 election left a lot of questions.  Among them, companies doing business in California are now asking about compliance with yet another California data privacy law, this time the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (the “CPRA”).  This article gives an overview addressing the what, when, and how of the CPRA.  (We won’t hazard a guess as to the why—we leave that to the backers of the new law.)

What is the CPRA?

The CPRA builds on the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (the “CCPA”) in a number of key ways.  It includes: new consumer rights, new requirements for businesses, and a number of other miscellaneous changes.  Some parts of the CCPA will remain in effect, and others are rephrased or clarified.  We provide below a high-level overview of topics we believe businesses should be thinking about now as they look ahead to building-out their CPRA compliance programs.

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Continue Reading You’re CCPA Compliant. So Now What? Top Tips for Companies Looking Ahead to the Recently-Passed CPRA

Update: On the evening of June 24, 2020—the same date we published the post below and the day before the original deadline for verification of signatures—the Secretary of State announced that the CPRA reached the signature verification threshold and qualified for the fall 2020 ballot.  While the Mactaggart lawsuit will now be a mere footnote in the history of the CPRA, any way you look at it, this was a successful week for Californians for Consumer Privacy.

On June 19, 2020, the Superior Court for Sacramento County, California issued a ruling providing relief to the promoters of the California Privacy Rights Act ballot initiative (the “CPRA”).  We wrote here about the potential problem with the timing of the signature verification process required for the CPRA to qualify for the Fall 2020 ballot, but that issue now appears to be resolved.

The specifics are to be ironed out in a further order to be jointly proposed by the parties, but suffice it to say that the procedural issue with the timing of signature verification will not prevent the CPRA from appearing on the Fall 2020 ballot.  For now, the Court ordered as follows:

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Continue Reading CPRA Back on Track Following Court Order

On May 14, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced that the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (the “CPRA”) had obtained sufficient raw signatures to qualify for the November 3, 2020 ballot.  Those signatures are currently being verified by the counties in which they were obtained.  However, based on a complaint filed June 8 by Alastair Mactaggart and other members of Californians for Consumer Privacy—the proponents of the CPRA—it appears that the verification process may not be completed in time for the CPRA to appear on the ballot this Fall.

The lawsuit, Alastair Mactaggart, et al. v. Padilla, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, alleges that Secretary of State Padilla failed to adhere to a provision of the California Elections Code requiring his office to “immediately” notify county officials to begin the verification process upon receipt of a sufficient number of raw signatures.  Here is a brief timeline of the events alleged in the Complaint:

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Continue Reading A Day Late, but Will it Fall Short? CPRA Ballot Initiative May Not Appear on Fall Ballot