TALLAHASSEE – A bill to better protect consumers’ privacy rights has won unanimous approval from a Florida House subcommittee, but business groups worry that the measure would lead to a deluge of class-action lawsuits.
HB 969, authored by Rep. Fiona McFarland (R-Sarasota), passed the House Regulatory Reform Subcommittee earlier this month. The bill would build on a current law, the Florida Information Protection Act, which requires businesses and public agencies to make reasonable efforts to protect consumers’ personal information and report data breaches.
Specifically, the legislation would add “biometric data,” such as fingerprints or DNA, to what’s considered personal identifying information, according to an analysis of the bill by legislative staff. HB 969 would also give consumers the right to gain access to their personal information, to delete or correct such data held by businesses and to block the sharing or sale of their personal data.
The legislation has the backing of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last month said the privacy protections would give Floridians the power to check the power of “Big Tech.”
“This one-way street – where Big Tech has all the power and consumers have little to none – stops now,” DeSantis said in a prepared statement. “... We will finally check these companies’ unfettered ability to profit off our data and ensure the protection of Floridians’ personal and private information.”
But the Associated Industries of Florida (AIF) expressed concern that as currently crafted, the privacy bill would add new burdens on smaller businesses and worsen the state’s litigation climate.
“AIF and its members, as responsible Florida companies, support protecting private data of all Floridians and regulating ‘data brokers,’” Brewster Bevis, AFI’s senior vice president of state and federal affairs, told the Florida Record in an email. “However, we are concerned that this legislation, in its current form, casts too wide a net by including not only large businesses and Big Tech, but many small and medium-sized businesses that would be significantly impacted by the financial burden of increased compliance and operational costs.”
The bill would also allow consumers to file their own lawsuits against businesses under certain conditions as a result of data breaches. Under the terms of the legislation, the consumer could seek damages of at least $100 but not more than $750 per incident. In addition, HB 969 would empower the Florida Department of Legal Affairs to sue businesses for up to $7,500 per intentional violation of privacy regulations and up to $2,500 for an unintentional violation.
“The proposed private cause of action would open a Pandora’s box of costly class-action lawsuits for these businesses,” Bevis said. “With Florida’s businesses already working through the challenges of COVID-19, facing the implementation of an increase in minimum wage and potentially seeing a nearly threefold increase in unemployment compensation tax per employee, adding this legislation on top of these factors could have dramatic effects on our state’s economy.”