Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Blog

On October 11, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he signed all five of the California Legislature’s September 2019 amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) into law: AB-25, AB-874, AB-1146, AB-1355 and AB-1564. The Governor had until October 13, 2019, to sign or veto the amendments, which were passed at the end of the Legislature’s 2019 legislative session. This news came just a day after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released proposed regulations implementing the CCPA.

As we previously summarized, among the most significant changes the amendments, now law, make to the CCPA are:

• A one-year exemption for HR data (AB-25) and business-to-business customer representative personnel data (AB-1355) from much of the law’s application;
• Changes to the definitions of “personal information” (AB-874 and AB-1355), “publicly available” information (AB-874) and “verifiable consumer request” (AB-1355);
• Limited exemptions for personal information necessary to fulfill a product warranty or recall, or to effectuate a vehicle repair covered by a vehicle warranty or recall (AB-1146);
• Revisions to the private right of action provision (AB-1355);
• Clarifications that a business does not need to retain or collect additional information than it would otherwise do in the ordinary course of business (AB-1355);
• Revisions to the anti-discrimination right (AB-1355); and

Clarification that a business only operating online needs to only provide an email address as a designated consumer request method (AB-1564).