The Florida House of Representatives has introduced its version of a comprehensive privacy law (HB 9 – no fancy acronym, unlike the FPPA in the Senate).  This blog post will explain the key differences between the House and Senate versions. I also propose two changes to the private right of action that would mitigate the risk of professional plaintiffs filing gotcha lawsuits. The post ends with a roadmap of what to expect moving forward in this legislative session.
Continue Reading Comparing Florida’s Two Leading Privacy Bills

By a vote of 29-11, the Florida Senate passed its version of HB 969 and sent the bill back to the House for consideration of the rewritten version. At this point, there are only two legislative options remaining: (1) the House passes it without any changes, or (2) no privacy law is adopted in Florida during this legislative session. There is not enough time for the House to change the law again and have Senate reconsider/pass it by tomorrow. The odds are high that the House will pass HB 969 tomorrow and Governor DeSantis will sign it.

Assuming that’s the case, advocates on all sides of this law will have “won” and “lost” something, but the consequences of these last few months will have an enormous impact on privacy law moving forward for much more significant reasons than the bill itself.
Continue Reading Florida Privacy Bill Passes Penultimate Legislative Hurdle; Significant Implications Follow

With only three days left in the legislative session, and on the morning when my Op-Ed was published by the Tallahassee Democrat, the Florida Senate weighed in on the House’s passage of HB 969.  There were two ways it could have done that: (1) take the House version sent to the Senate via messages and make changes to and vote on that version; or (2) ignore the version provided via messages and simply pass the pending version of SB 1734 in the Senate then send that version to the House via messages. It chose path #1. Moments ago, the  Senate passed a strike-all amendment that struck the entirety of HB 969 and replaced it with a modified version of SB 1734. A separate post will discuss the modified version of SB 1734 in greater detail, but this post briefly explains where things stand now and what to expect next.
Continue Reading What Just Happened With Florida Privacy Legislation?