Workforce Bulletin

California businesses, including employers, that have not already complied with their statutory data privacy obligations under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), including as to employee and job applicant personal information, should be taking all necessary steps to do so. See No More Exceptions: What to Do When the California Privacy Exemptions for Employee, Applicant and B2B Data Expire on January 1, 2023. As background, a covered business is one that “does business” in California, and either has annual gross revenues of $25 million, annually buys sells or shares personal information of 100,00 consumers or households, or derives 50 percent or more of its annual revenues from selling or sharing consumers’ personal information. It also applies, in certain circumstances, to entities that control or are controlled by a covered business or joint ventures. Covered businesses may be exempt from obligations under certain enumerated entity-level or information-level carve-outs.

The recently proposed amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) should be a wake up call to those employers who are not already actively planning for the January 1, 2020 compliance deadline.

The amendment reaffirms that employers must (i) provide employees with notice of the categories of personal information collected and the purposes for which the information shall be used at or before collection; and (ii) implement reasonable cybersecurity safeguards to protect certain employee personal information or risk employee lawsuits, including class actions seeking ...