The California Legislature has passed AB-1281 over to the Governor's desk, approving the continuation of an exemption for personal information collected in the employment context and certain information collected in the course of a business-to-business (B2B) transaction or about B2B-related personnel. As a reminder, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) currently has two exemptions for these types of personal information and, thus, the majority of the CCPA requirements do not apply in these contexts. However, those exemptions are due to sunset on December 31, 2020 without legislative action. If the Governor signs the AB-1281 extension by the deadline of September 30th, the exemptions would be extended until January 1, 2022.
In addition to AB-1281, the pending ballot initiative for the California Privacy Rights Act contains a similar exemption for employee and B2B personal information. If approved in the November 3, 2020 general election, the California Privacy Rights Act would extend the exemption until January 1, 2023.
Things in California privacy-land continue to change - watch this space.
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