Effective January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) imposes burdensome European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) inspired transparency and individual data subject rights requirements on almost every company that handles “personal information” regarding California residents.
Effective January 1, 2023, employees and business contacts are in full scope of the California law, and further data subject rights and business obligations apply, including publishing retention schedules and ensuring collection purpose limitation. Also in 2023, CCPA/GDPR-inspired consumer privacy laws become effective in Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and Utah, and Iowa, Montana, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas and Florida have passed legislation that will become effective in 2024. Many of these comprehensive state privacy laws require conducting and documenting assessments of data practices, which are subject to inspection by regulators. California and Colorado have promulgated very complex regulations detailing how companies must implement privacy protections, while further rule making remains ongoing.
Multiple other states have less comprehensive consumer privacy laws, several strictly regulating health-related data outside of the context of just healthcare providers, and three states now regulate data brokers. A patchwork of sectorial federal and state privacy laws (e.g., Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)) continue to apply, although the new state laws exclude rather than overlap some, but not all, of what is covered by existing laws. In addition to the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a growing number of states are regulating data and online activities of minors, most notably the California Age Appropriate Design Act.
How We Can Help
We can:
- Determine the applicability of data privacy and protection laws to your company and its data
- Conduct a gap assessment of your company’s current data practices against privacy and security and other consumer protection laws
- Prepare and execute work plans to achieve compliance in a cost-effective, efficient manner, leveraging existing compliance efforts where applicable
- Interpret nuances in statutory and regulatory provisions, such as identifying business partners as service providers, contractors, processors, co-controllers, third parties or something else under the laws and developing strategies for avoiding certain obligations or implications of the laws
- Assist with individual compliance tasks, such as:
- Conducting data inventories and assessing data practices
- Designing processes and templates to respond to individual right requests and providing counsel on specific request responses
- Drafting privacy notices, including meeting regulatory content requirements and addressing purpose, sale and sharing, targeted advertising, profiling, sensitive data, rights request processes, loyalty programs and other financial incentives and retention
- Making data broker registrations
- Assessing data security and incident preparedness
- Preparing contracts, including updating data processing agreements (DPAs) to cover the new contracting requirements these laws mandate
- Advising on digital advertising, data transfers, processing of sensitive data and use of automated decision-making and profiling, and how to apply new opt-in and opt-out rights to these activities when required
- Help design and implement privacy-by-design and data inventory and assessment procedures and provide assessment counsel
- Negotiate and document data-related transactions
- Advise on the use of artificial intelligence, including profiling and automated decision making
- Train employees regarding the new legal requirements
- Educate C-suite/board and data stakeholders regarding compliance obligations
- Defend companies in enforcement actions
- Assess cybersecurity and respond to security incidents (Learn More)
Why Choose Us
- Our lawyers have spent decades helping companies comply with requirements in other US data privacy and protection laws (e.g., HIPAA, GLBA, Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), COPPA, Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), Cable Act, Privacy Act, California Online Privacy Protection Act (OPPA), California Shine the Light, the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and other laws regulating biometrics, and state data security and incident notification laws, etc.). Our team includes the former chief information officer (CIO) of the US government, lawyers with significant business and in-house experience, and multiple regulatory agency lawyers.
- Our US and European lawyers worked hand-in-hand to assist hundreds of enterprises with the compliance challenges stemming from the GDPR. Many of the same skills, processes and materials, as well as nuanced interpretations and decision-making, developed for GDPR compliance are used by us for US compliance.
- The global composition of our Data Privacy, Cybersecurity & Digital Assets team provides us with unique experience that we leverage to our clients’ benefit when creating global data governance programs that address the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA.
- The work that you will get from us will not be merely academic lists of the statutory requirements with examples as to how to comply. We pride ourselves on being responsive, commercial and practical in our advice by understanding and balancing our clients’ business goals and risk tolerance with legal requirements, best practices and potential exposure.