This blog post will summarize Senate Bill 1864, released on Friday, which is the first “comprehensive” privacy bill to be released in advance of the 2022 Florida legislative session. This is a long post, so I begin with a “too long, didn’t read” section that I’ve found helpful in articles I’ve read. I then describe the FPPA in detail, but by pulling various pieces of the 34-page law together by subject matter. I close with some personal opinions about this bill and what we can expect in the upcoming legislative session.
Continue Reading Will The FPPA Be Florida’s First Comprehensive Privacy Law?

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?

The Florida Senate appears poised to hit the brakes on privacy legislation that has thus far soared through committees in both legislative chambers.  The House version (HB 969) and the Senate Version (SB 1734) would have not only created the same consumer privacy rights as the CCPA, the bills would have created massive private rights of action, far broader than any other privacy law in the United States.  

Today, a “strike all” Committee Amendment was offered to the Senate version.  TRANSLATION – the Senate Rules Committee, where SB 1734 is now pending, is proposing a “friendly amendment” that would strike the entirety of SB 1734 and replace it with a new version.
Continue Reading Momentum Slows for Florida Privacy Law; What’s Next?

The Florida Senate’s version of a new comprehensive privacy law (a.k.a. the “Florida Privacy Protection Act” (FPPA)) passed unscathed out of the Senate’s Committee on Commerce and Tourism yesterday. The bill’s sponsor fought off two proposed amendments: one that would have eliminated the private right of action and a second that would have required more than just a revenue threshold for the law to apply. This post describes what makes the FPPA more aggressive than the CCPA, it provides a summary of the Senate Committee hearing, and it shares some late-breaking news about the House version (HB 969).
Continue Reading Senate Version of Florida Privacy Law Moves Forward; House Version Makes Class-Action Lawsuits Even Easier