‘CCPA 2.0’ Initiative Qualifies for CA General Election Ballot
On June 24, the California Secretary of State announced that the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) has qualified as a statewide ballot initiative to be listed on this November’s General Election ballot.
The announcement follows official confirmation that the nonprofit group behind the ballot initiative, Californians for Consumer Privacy, obtained in excess of the 623,212 signatures needed in order to qualify for the statewide ballot. This was verified by county elections officials via a random sample method.
What is CPRA?
CPRA is sometimes referred to as “CCPA 2.0” because it builds on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to afford California residents more control over their personal information (PI) and to impose additional obligations on in-scope businesses.
Similar to the CCPA, if passed, CPRA would have a wide-ranging national and international impact well beyond California based businesses. CPRA, like the CCPA, applies to organizations that meet certain eligibility thresholds, and process California residents’ PI. An organization does not need to have offices or employees in California to be subject to CPRA.
Some of the key changes under CPRA are:
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Establishment of a California Privacy Protection Agency for enforcement;
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Extension of the CCPA’s employee and business-to-business PI exemptions until 2023;
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Elimination of the CCPA’s allowance for businesses to have 30 days to cure violations after being notified of alleged non-compliance (Under CPRA, the 30-day cure period is reserved only as a means of preventing individual or class-wide statutory damages as part of a private right of action for security violations);
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Imposes limitations upon the authority of the Legislature to amend the privacy law;
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Definitions and restrictions around sensitive PI, precise geolocation, and cross-context behavioral advertising; and
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New rules in relation to contractual flow downs, notifying consumers of PI retention periods, and updates to the definitions of “business” and “publicly available information.”
For a more detailed summary of the key features of the CCPA 2.0 ballot initiative, see Greenberg Traurig’s January 2020 client alert.
What happens if CPRA passes in November?
Organizations subject to CPRA will have until January 2023 to take the necessary steps to come into compliance with the new data protection law. Pursuant to CPRA, during this period the California Privacy Protection Agency will be established and issue guidance on various key issues on the application of CPRA.
Is CPRA the same as the CCPA Regulations?
No, these are separate items. In early June, the Office of the California Attorney General (OAG) submitted its finalized CCPA regulations to the California Office of Administrative Law for expedited review. For more information, see our update on the CCPA Regulations here.
Whereas the CCPA will begin being enforced by the OAG on July 1, the highly detailed regulations that accompany the law technically cannot be enforced until the administrative law review is complete. Without an expedited review and alteration of the normal effective date schedule, the regulations will not take effect until Oct. 1.
The CPRA ballot initiative, conversely, is independent of the CCPA and its regulations, in that it will be voted on by California voters as part of the November ballot, and would update the CCPA following its successful passage.
