Author: Geoffrey Lottenberg
In mid-February, Florida Congresswoman Fiona McFarland proposed House Bill 969 (HB969), which seeks to establish tighter restrictions on the handling of personal information for commercial purposes and to create a private cause of action for breach of those restrictions. HB969 very closely tracks the language of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), which has received substantial praise from data protectionists, and similar to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The Florida bill, if passed, would apply to any company doing business in the state that has more than $25 million in gross revenues, trades in the personal information of more than 50,000 Florida consumers, or gets 50% or more of its revenue from transactions involving the personal information of Florida consumers.
