Washington Ends the Legislative Session with an Impasse on the Privacy Bill

For the second year in a row, the Washington State legislators have reached an impasse on the comprehensive Privacy Act. A proposed Act, which took its inspiration from the European Union’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act, would have introduced certain rights previously unavailable to the U.S. consumers as well as novel obligations on controllers and processors of personal data.

Like last year, the legislators could not reach a compromise before a legislative deadline on a number of issues including a private right of action and regulation of facial recognition. After the State Senate and the State House passed different versions of the Act, the legislators appointed a six-person conference committee which unsuccessfully tried to reconcile the two versions.

The existence of a private right of action, i.e. a consumer’s ability to sue a company for a violation of the law, is a major sticking point in crafting a privacy legislation in the United States.   For example, under the version of the bill passed by the State House, consumers would have been able to bring lawsuits, including class actions, to recover the actual damages sustained by them, together with the attorney’s fee and limited treble damages.

Whereas the consumer groups argue that the ability to sue companies for violating privacy laws gives consumers a say in asserting their rights, businesses are anxious about defending lawsuits over new and complex privacy regulations.  The existence of a private right of action, which has been proposed in a number of state privacy bills, substantially raises the cost of non-compliance for covered businesses.

Even though Washington State has postponed the passing of a privacy law for two years in the row, some legislators are optimistic that “a better bill can be brought forward in 2021.”

About two dozen states have introduced privacy legislation following the passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act in May of 2018.  In addition, a number of federal privacy statutes have been introduced on Capitol Hill.  Please follow the Clarip’s blog to learn about the updates and developments in the state and federal privacy legislation.

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