California Lawmaker Amends Bill to Deal with Privacy Protections for Public Officials

Assembly Bill 302, which as introduced dealt with health care service plans, was significantly amended in late June to focus on the privacy rights of a new class of “protected individuals” that are defined as current or former elected officials, officers of the court, and their family members. 

The bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 15th. The hearing will be the first to consider the bill’s new subject matter.

The bill as amended provides that protected individuals can request that a person or governmental entity refrain from publishing, transferring, releasing, disclosing, or selling their personal information. The bill further provides that a protected individual, or the California Privacy Protection Agency acting on their behalf, can submit a request to a person to delete the protected individual’s personal information. A person in receipt of such a request must comply within 72 hours in order to be in compliance with the bill’s provisions. A violation can result in civil and criminal penalties.

As amended on July 3rd, the bill defines, “personal information” to exclude various forms of publicly availably information, including “information that is required by law to be made publicly available by a governmental entity.” CLTA is opposed to the legislation on the basis that its provisions requiring the deletion of personal information provide no exceptions to statutory or regulatory recordkeeping requirements, or legitimate business uses of the information, such as enabling a policyholder to file a title insurance claim.