California's Privacy Law Sets Manageable Tone

California sets the standard for the rest of the country in a lot of areas—now, we can add privacy regulation to the list, as discussed by my colleagues Richard S. Eisert and Gary A. Kibel in a recent Davis & Gilbert client alert. This summer, California passed a bill known as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, imposing rigorous privacy-related obligations on entities that do business in the state. Some have called the act "GDPR-light" since it implements some concepts similar to those in the new European law.

The California law was thrown together in a hurried effort by the legislature to head off an even more restrictive ballot initiative. That initiative had broad public support and enough signatures to appear on the November ballot. Its sponsors agreed to withdraw it, however, if the Consumer Privacy Act was put in place by the end of the June.