Florida businesses are sounding alarm bells about a data privacy bill that passed the Florida House’s Commerce Committee last week, arguing that its passage would worsen the state’s legal climate and saddle companies with burdensome compliance costs.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce is among the groups opposing House Bill 9, which would provide consumers with the right to opt in or out of any plans to share or sell personal data and give consumers the option of civil litigation to enforce provisions of the bill and recover their attorney fees. Passage of a consumer privacy bill has been a priority of Gov. Ron DeSantis and House Speaker Chris Sprowls, according to the chamber.
“Florida’s broken legal climate is already hurting consumers and local businesses, and HB 9, related to data privacy, could create a new cottage industry of plaintiff attorneys exacerbating this law,” the chamber’s senior director of business, economic development and innovation policy, Carolyn Johnson, told the Florida Record in an email.
Chamber officials have stressed that the bill would hurt a wider array of businesses in the state than the intended target, “big tech.”
“This, combined with the inability to cure accidental noncompliance, and a one-way attorney fee statute, leaves the Florida chamber concerned the bill passage could create the next litigation wave for Florida businesses already dealing with our bottom-five legal climate,” Johnson said.
Under the provisions of the bill, a consumer could seek statutory damages of between $100 and $750 per incident, or the actual damages – whichever is the higher amount.
HB 9 would also give the state Department of Legal Affairs the power to bring legal actions against noncomplying companies under the Florida Unfair or Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Among other groups expressing concerns about the legislation is Florida TaxWatch. Although the group supports the protection of consumer privacy data, it noted that data privacy legislation proposed last year could have resulted in compliance costs of $6.2 billion to $21 billion in the first year. Yearly costs thereafter would be $4.6 billion or more, TaxWatch reported.