Law360 Publishes Akin Gump Analysis of California Consumer Protection Act Developments

Law360 has published the article “Calif. Businesses Avoid Privacy Class Action Explosion,” written by Akin Gump litigation partners Seamus Duffy, Natasha Kohne, Meredith Slawe and Michael Stortz. The article analyzes recent developments related to the new California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), which takes effect January 1, 2020.

The authors write that the CCPA “represents a revolution in data privacy rights for consumers in the United States.” Modeled on the core elements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, the CCPA “creates a new set of rights of disclosure, access, deletion and nondiscrimination for ‘consumers’ — currently defined broadly — in California.”

Meanwhile, as the article notes, a bill supported by the California Attorney General that would have added an unrestricted private right of action for any violation of the CCPA died in the state Senate last week. The authors say the legislation would have “opened the floodgates to a wave of class action litigation under the CCPA, to be followed inevitably by inconsistent court rulings that would further compound the compliance challenges under the statute.”

While the CCPA “is not a model of statutory drafting,” the authors observe that combining it with the private class action regime “would be, in a word, disastrous. … [and] would be the polar opposite of the regime chosen by the original drafters, in which a single public authority guides businesses through a compliance transition period and chooses enforcement actions to address important enforcement priorities.” They call on the state’s AG to embrace the opportunity “to guide California through this important transition.”

To read the article in its entirety, please click here.