California Among a Dozen States Opposing Federal Privacy Bill

California, Connecticut, Virginia, and more than a dozen other states attorneys general are rallying against a federal data privacy bill they said would shrink the rights of more than 100 million Americans, as well as restrict their enforcement powers.

The states’ coalition of Democrats, led by California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, urged Congress in a letter Tuesday to reject the SECURE Data Act (H.R. 8413), federal legislation introduced in April that would create a national data privacy standard—and largely override states’ privacy laws.

Democrats and consumer advocacy groups have also raised concerns with the proposal, which they said would leave consumers with fewer protections online. But the legislation has garnered strong support from companies and trade organizations that say it will ease business compliance. More than a 100 state and local chambers of commerce urged Congress to advance the bill in their own letter to the committee Tuesday.

A House Energy and Commerce Committee panel held a hearing on the bill Wednesday morning.

State enforcers pushed back on the legislation’s preemption provision, which they said would leave “the data privacy field frozen in time” until Congress amends or updates its law. The legislation would also make it more difficult for users to express their privacy choices, weaken limits on businesses’ use of consumer data, and restrict states’ enforcement powers, the letter said.

“Federal action to protect Americans’ privacy is essential, but not at the expense of the strong state laws that already protect Californians,” Bonta said in a press release Wednesday.

The SECURE Data Act would threaten not just 20 state comprehensive privacy laws, but also laws that protect the home addresses of judges and police officers, create data broker registries, and shield patients’ medical information from disclosure, among others, the states’ officials said.

The states’ attorneys general and consumer protection authorities pointed in the letter to other federal privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act as examples of regimes with limited preemption that set a national floor and allowed states to enact their own laws.

California’s privacy agency has separately opposed the bill in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.