On March 26, the Texas attorney general acted swiftly, filing a lawsuit against Auctions Unlimited LLC over an online auction that ended on March 24. The auction sparked an article published by the Chicago Tribune entitled “more than 750,000 masks auctioned for huge markup in Texas while hospitals run out nationwide.”
Posts published in “State Regulation”
A number of states have tolled the statutes of limitations on legal actions in response to COVID-19. The Iowa Supreme Court announced a toll on statutes of limitations in a March 17 order regarding court procedures. According to a March 23 operations summary from the Iowa Judicial Branch: “The March 17th order is intended to toll the statute of limitations or similar deadline for commencing an action in district court by 48 days. Tolling means you add that amount of time to the statute of limitations. So, for example, if the statute would otherwise run on April 8, 2020, it…
The Maryland Court of Appeals recently held that victims on whose behalf money is collected or property is recovered by the Maryland Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General's Office (CPD) or federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have no authority, through a private settlement, whether or not approved by a court, to preclude the CPD or CFPB from pursuing their own remedies.
The “Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act,” HF 3936, is a walleye-size privacy bill that significantly expands on the California Consumer Privacy Act. Unlike the CCPA, it does not include a dollar threshold for applicability.
Instead of introducing one all-encompassing bill addressing consumer data privacy issues, legislators in Wisconsin have introduced three consecutively-numbered privacy bills.
Rhode Island S 2430 is titled the “Consumer Privacy Protection Act” and has a number of provisions similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act, though the annual gross income threshold is much lower.
Although just over five pages in length (excluding the cover page and three-page summary), New Jersey S269 is not your garden-variety piece of privacy legislation and is packed with plenty of weedy issues.
Legislators in Mississippi recently introduced SB 2548. the "Mississippi Consumer Data Privacy Act." The bill contains provisions similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act but goes further than the CCPA with a lower annual gross revenue threshold, applying to any for-profit business, or any entity that controls or is controlled by such a business, that does business in Mississippi.
Illinois SB 3299 and HB 5603 are nearly identical and would create the “Consumer Privacy Act.”
Idaho HB 425 was introduced on Feb. 6, 2020, to address the perceived issue that “current Idaho law enables excessive attorney's fees and fails to provide judges with clear guidance to combat abuses of the collections process.” This proposed law would apply to “any person” and does not limit its application to debt collectors.
Consumer data privacy appears to be on the minds of legislators in Arizona this session. As previously mentioned, House Concurrent Resolution 2013 was introduced in Arizona on Jan. 10, 2020, by five Republicans and one Democrat declaring: That the Members of the Legislature oppose the enactment of laws, the adoption of regulations or the imposition of out-of-state standards that would restrict or otherwise dictate standards related to consumer data privacy, absent a clear nexus with consumer harm. That the Members of the Legislature believe a single federal standard for comprehensive consumer data privacy regulation is preferable to a state-by-state approach. Not…
Like many states across the U.S., Hawaii and Maryland have introduced new privacy legislation this year geared toward protecting consumers' personal information.