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California Voters Approve the California Privacy Rights Act

On November 3, 2020, California voters passed the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) ballot initiative with slightly under 60% of votes to approve the measure (as of publication). The ballot initiative, which was submitted by the architects of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), had earlier garnered 900,000 signatures—far more than the roughly 625,000 necessary for certification on the 2020 ballot.

The CPRA amends the CCPA, adds new consumer rights, clarifies definitions and creates comprehensive privacy and data security obligations for processing and protecting personal information. These material changes will require businesses to—again—reevaluate their privacy and data security programs to comply with the law.

Effective date and timeline for enforcement

The CPRA amendments become operative on January 1, 2023, and will apply to personal information collected by businesses on or after January 1, 2022 (except with respect to a consumer’s right to access their personal information). Enforcement of the CPRA amendments will not begin until July 1, 2023.

The CCPA’s existing exemptions for business contacts, employees, job applicants, owners, directors, officers, medical staff members and independent contractors will remain in effect until December 31, 2022.

The newly created California Privacy Protection Agency (“Agency”) will be required to adopt final regulations by July 1, 2022. For more information about the Agency and its role in enforcing the amended CCPA, see our previous article.

The passage of the CPRA does not affect the enforceability of the CCPA as currently implemented.

New rights under the CPRA

In addition to the CCPA’s rights to know, to delete, and to opt out of the sale of personal information, the CPRA creates the following new rights for California consumers:

  • The right to correct personal information
  • The right to limit the use of sensitive personal information
  • The right to opt out of the “sharing” of personal information

These rights are explained in greater detail in our previous article.

New compliance obligations for businesses subject to the CPRA?

The CPRA creates new obligations that are similar to the data processing principles found in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Such responsibilities include:

  • Transparency: Businesses must specifically and clearly inform consumers about how they collect and use personal information and how they can exercise their rights and choice;
  • Purpose limitation: Businesses may only collect consumer’s personal information for specific, explicit and legitimate disclosed purposes and may not further collect, use or disclose consumers’ personal information for reasons incompatible with those purposes;
  • Data minimization: Businesses may collect consumers’ personal information only to the extent that it is relevant and necessary to the purposes for which it is being collected, used and shared;
  • Consumer rights: Businesses must provide consumers with easily accessible means to obtain their personal information, delete it or correct it, and to opt out of its sale and the sharing across business platforms, services, businesses and devices, and to limit the use of their sensitive information; and
  • Security: Businesses are required to take reasonable precautions to [...]

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CCPA Amendment Update: California Governor Approves CCPA Amendment with Exceptions for HIPAA De-Identified Information and Other Health Data

On September 25, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law California AB 713, which amends the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to create expanded exceptions for: HIPAA business associates; information that has been de-identified in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA); and information collected, used or disclosed in certain human subjects research. AB 713 reflects an intense lobbying effort by medical technology, pharmaceutical, and other health and life sciences industry stakeholders. AB 713 became effective immediately following Governor Newsom’s signature, as the bill included an urgency clause calling for immediate action to mitigate the CCPA’s potential negative impact on health-related research.

AB 713 eases some of the CCPA compliance challenges experienced by the health care and life sciences industries by more closely aligning the CCPA with HIPAA and other laws governing human subjects research. However, AB 713 also creates new compliance obligations by requiring entities subject to requirements for “businesses” under the CCPA, as well as other entities residing or doing business in California, to include certain provisions in license agreements or other contracts for the sale or license of de-identified patient information. While AB 713 becomes effective immediately, as discussed below, it requires compliance with the new contracting requirement beginning January 1, 2021.

We summarize below the salient provisions of AB 713.

Exception for De-identified Patient Information

AB 713 provides relief to health care, life sciences and other organizations that have been grappling with how to achieve compliance with the previously inconsistent de-identification standards under HIPAA and the CCPA. Without AB713’s CCPA amendment, it was possible for data that has been de-identified under the HIPAA de-identification standard to constitute “personal information” under the CCPA because CCPA and the HIPAA Privacy Rule include different language for their respective de-identification standards. This has complicated CCPA-regulated businesses’ strategies for licensing or otherwise commercializing HIPAA de-identified data. For example, HIPAA protected health information that has been de-identified under HIPAA may still contain identifiers of California physicians or other individuals who serve patients. These identifiers may have constituted “personal information” under the CCPA when held by a CCPA-regulated business, creating a right under the CCPA for the individuals to opt out of sales of the personal information. For more information about the inconsistent HIPAA and CCPA de-identification standards, see our On the Subject.

AB 713 resolves the potential disconnect between the CCPA and HIPAA’s de-identification standards by expressly providing that the CCPA does not apply to information that meets the following conditions:

  • The information has been de-identified in accordance with a HIPAA de-identification method (i.e., the safe harbor or expert determination method).
  • The information was derived from patient information that was originally collected, created, transmitted or maintained by an entity subject to HIPAA, the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (Common Rule). “Patient information” means protected health information or individually identifiable health information under HIPAA, identifiable private information under the [...]

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