U.S. Chamber of Commerce Urge to Congress to Establish Comprehensive Privacy Legislation
In recent blogs, we have reported on the passage and proposal of state privacy legislations from Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Florida, and California, which contain considerable overlapping provisions—consumer’s right to opt-out of targeted advertising, request information on their stored personal data, and to delete or correct their stored information. However, despite their similarities, each bill has its own terms of enforcement, duties, scope and specifications specific to the state of enactment.
On January 13, 2022, the United States Chamber of Commerce (“USCOC”) and a multitude of business industry groups from national associations and 28 individual states sent a letter to Congress requesting comprehensive privacy legislation that would displace the “patchwork” of state privacy laws poised to take effect this year.
As a basis of the need for this type of overreaching legislation, the USCOC relied on the burden that small businesses would incur in trying to comply with each of these slightly differing state legislations. As such, the USCOC called on Congress to “provide meaningful and robust protections for consumers through sole federal agency and state attorney general enforcement.”
Although this letter is simply an effort to advocate for legislative changes, with the increased amount of privacy legislation being proposed and the weight of so many industry groups standing behind the USCOC in this effort, there is potential for preemptory legislation to be instituted. Accordingly, businesses of all sizes should:
Review applicable current state privacy legislations and outline and maintain obligations under each applicable state;
Monitor state privacy legislations that are currently being considered by state legislators to ensure awareness of laws passing the proposal stage; and
Continue to monitor the efforts of industry groups to enact federal privacy legislation and the legislative response to these efforts.