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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA RECORD

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Proposition 24 opposed by a coalition of 10 businesses and trade associations

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Real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart filed Proposition 24 | Youtube

A coalition of 10 trade associations, companies and organizations say it’s ‘extraordinarily premature’ for the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) to be replaced by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA) as required by Proposition 24 if passed.

The CPRA would amend consumer privacy laws, which the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) says threatens California businesses with more compliance burdens and lawsuit exposure.

“Already business owners had to comply with the CCPA when it was first passed and then there were the regulations,” said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the ANA Group. “Companies spent multimillions of dollars in compliance costs and now if you impose further compliance to the CPRA with regulation this is going to have an impact. Who's going to be paying for this? At some point, it is highly likely that this is going to be passed on to consumers.”

In addition to the ANA, other members of the coalition opposing Prop 24 include the American Association of Advertising Agencies, California Grocers Association, the Digital Advertising Alliance, National Business Coalition on E-Commerce and Privacy, the Network Advertising Initiative, the Insights Association and NetChoice.

"We think it's extraordinarily premature," Jaffe told the Southern California Record. "The California Consumer Protection Act has barely been in full force."

 The California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 is being presented as a ballot initiative to voters at the Nov. 3 elections and, if passed, Prop 24 would become law and supercede the existing CCPA.

Real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart, who is board chair of Californians for Consumer Privacy, filed the ballot initiative, according to Ballotpedia data.

“Somebody has decided that they know better than everybody without data,” said Jaffe in an interview. “How did they come up with these better ideas? They seem to feel that the CCPA is not adequate.”

Jaffe added that now is not the time to implement new privacy laws to comply with as businesses are still trying to recover from COVID-19 shutdowns.

“Many companies are struggling to stay in business, to be an efficient marketer and all those things they do under normal circumstances in a very competitive marketplace,” Jaffe said. “Lots of companies don't survive under normal circumstances. Many of them had to shutter and they're going to have to let people know that they exist and start off almost from scratch. A number of companies that do major business in California laid off thousands and thousands of workers just in the last week or two.”

“There have been some 826,784 coronavirus cases and 16,149 fatalities as of Oct. 6 statewide, according to the California Department of Public Health dashboard.

As previously reported, the CPRA is expected to lock into statute a vague and broad private right of action which gives private attorneys the ability to "shakedown" businesses, critics say, with lawsuits alleging violations of a law where clear standards are missing.

“We thought that the attorney general should be the person who has the authority to sue for those types of violations but that's not what the legislature thought,” said Jaffe.

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