Florida lawmakers are racing to find common ground between competing data privacy bills as the legislative session draws to a close and businesses raise red flags about what they see as financial burdens and litigation issues in the bills.
In the wake of the Florida House passing its privacy bill, HB 969, on April 21, the state Senate on Thursday stripped out the language of the House bill and substituted a modified version of the Senate’s data privacy bill, SB 1734. It passed the Senate on a vote of 29-11 and returned it to the House.
“We’re in for a very interesting period here in the closing hours of the Florida legislature,” Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of government relations for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), told the Florida Record. “... The ball is in the House’s court.”
The ANA has sent opposition letters to legislative leaders and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supports privacy legislation as a way to protect consumers from “Big Tech” and social media. The association is especially critical of the House bill, which contains a private right of action for consumers to pursue data privacy violations in civil court.
“Including a private right of action in the bills would cripple small businesses, deter companies from doing business in Florida and serve as a windfall for the plaintiff’s bar, without providing commensurate benefits for consumers,” Jaffe and other advertising officials said in a letter this month to DeSantis and legislative leaders.
Other concerns raised by the advertising industry include businesses not having adequate time to act on consumers’ requests to “opt out” of the sale of their personal information.
“If it went into effect, it would be catastrophic for a lot of small businesses and others,” Jaffe said of HB 969.
Although the ANA strongly objects to the filing of private civil lawsuits over data privacy violations, removing that provision is not enough to address industry concerns about the bills, according to the ANA.
“The ANA believes that even if there were good legislation in the states, we think there has to be a national approach and not a state-by-state approach,” Jaffe said.
Advertising companies in Florida and elsewhere are especially concerned about data privacy restrictions because their livelihoods depend on using data to target ads for the correct audience, he said.
HB 969 would add “biometric data” to the definition of information protected under the Florida Information Protection Act. Under the bill, consumers would also gain rights to access personal information, delete or correct personal data and opt out of the sale or sharing of the information.