California has a handful of new pay disclosure laws going into effect in 2023. To get  a sense of the impact those measures could have, we spoke with former California State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, author of the Golden State's 2015 Fair Pay Act, which forces employers to prove that pay disparities between workers are not due to gender. 

A new executive order from President Joe Biden aims to bolster U.S. privacy protections in a way that ensures such data transfers comply with EU laws, thus theoretically streamlining the flow of that data across the Atlantic to the U.S. 

Such transfers have been a troubled and complex issue for years . On today's show we are joined by Crowell & Moring Senior Counsel Christiana State, who focuses on privacy and cybersecurity from the firm’s San Francisco office. She specializes in and advises on issues related to technology and commercial transactions, and M&A corporate activities like the ones we are talking about today. 

In 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law that essentially allowed only Nevada to have legal sports wagering. Dozens of states have since legalized either in-person or online sports betting, or both. But California, the nation's biggest potential market, has not been one of the. 

Which brings us to two very hotly contested opposing ballot measures that would legalize online sports wagering here in California, Propositions 26 and 27. To date, the two campaigns have spent a staggering amount of money trying to persuade voters for or against these proposals. Alas, if polls are to be believed it might all be for nothing because there is every indication both of these ballot proposals are going to go down to defeat. 

But you could say it is the safest of bets that the parties most interested in bringing online sports wagering to California are not going to fold their hands and walk away. 

To help us suss out what is going on with these two measures and what we can likely expect to happen after November 8th, I’m joined today by Ari Plachta, who covers politics and government for the Sacramento Bee and who has written extensively on this issue. 

California Gov.  Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill ( AB 2273) that requires any business serving up web pages likely to be accessed by California youths to consider the children’s best interests when designing their sites. Since California children can easily access websites from anywhere, the law could apply to websites published anywhere – or at least anywhere in the United States, which, in turn, could make any American business with a website subject to California law.

In this episode of the State Net Capitol Journal Legislative Deep Dive host Rich Ehisen talks with SNCJ correspondent Brian Joseph about his recent story detailing  AB 2273's signing and the impact this wide-ranging bill could have outside the Golden State. 

The American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) is pending federal legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would for the first time impose comprehensive national standards for how companies manage consumers’ personal identifying information, or PII. 

The ADPPA is not the first data privacy bill ever introduced in Congress, but it is the first one to gain committee approval and be eligible to be heard in the full House of Representatives.  

The bill in its current state contains numerous tents of great interest to corporate compliance teams around the nation, including a private right of action that would allow consumers to file suit against data collectors and processors in federal court for damages, injunctions, litigation costs, and attorney’s fees for a data breach, data misuse, and not reporting on or deleting PII when requested. It would further give  consumers the right to access and review their PII collected by an organization, the right to fix any incorrect data contained there, and in most cases the right to have that PII erased. 

While most observers doubt this measure will become law, there is strong speculation that it could lay the groundwork for more successful privacy legislation in the near future. To help us unpack this complex legislation, we are joined by Joseph Duball, who covers all things data privacy for the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Joe will help us glean what is in this bill and how it could impact the data privacy landscape going forward at both the state and federal levels. 

We're joined on this episode by our old friend Jennifer Rubin, head of the ESG Practice Group for Mintz, based in the San Diego office, who will give us her insights into fast-moving legislation in the CA Capitol to require companies to list pay ranges with job postings and to report a wide range of salary data to the state. 

August is traditionally one of the busiest and most volatile months of the California legislative season, as lawmakers, lobbyists and activists all push to get their favorite bills to the finish line or to kill the ones they oppose. One of the more closely watched bills this month has been CA SB 1162, a gender pay equity measure introduced by Sen. Monique Limón, a Democrat who represents SD 19, which covers much of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. 

The many tenets of this bill include: 

By 2027, California companies with 250 or more workers would be required to submit salary data for their workers to the state, with an emphasis on breaking the data down between gender, race and ethnicity. 

Companies with 15 or more workers would also be required to provide employees with the pay scale for any job they currently hold, and to list the pay scales for positions in any job postings. 

 It would impose fines on companies that don’t adhere to a 2020 CA law that requires the state’s largest employers to collect wage data and report the information to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. 

But lawmakers also stripped out a amendment that would have required the state to make public the wage data that companies submit to it, a tenet that had drawn intense opposition from the business community. 

In this episode of the SNCJ Legislative Deep Dive, host Rich Ehisen welcomes Alexandra Barrage, a partner with Davis Wright Tremaine LLC in Washington D.C. to discuss the state of cryptocurrencies in the midst of the so-called "crypto winter," and more specifically to talk about state and federal efforts to create some form of regulatory framework for a marketplace that has often been described as the digital wild west. 

Barrage co-leads DWT's Crypto Working Group and counsels clients on resolution planning, regulatory risk, third-party risk management, digital assets, and bankruptcy matters. Previous to that, she was with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, where she was the Associate Director of Policy for the Division of Complex Institution Supervision and Resolution. 

While crypto is down, it is hardly out. The industry is still raising billions of dollars in venture capital, and is in fact poised this year to top last year’s record total of $26.9 billion. 

States are also getting into the act, with many working to grease the wheels for crypto in their jurisdictions. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 37 states this year collectively introduced around 150 bills dealing with cryptocurrency and digital assets.  Meanwhile, governors like California Gov. Gavin Newsom are also jumping into the fray via executive order. And after years of taking a hands-off approach, there are now a handful of bills in Congress as well.   

In today’s show, we discuss the draft rules California regulators released in May in advance of the state’s latest privacy law – the California Privacy Rights Act – going into effect next January. To get a handle on what those highly anticipated draft rules did and did not contain and what happens now, we are joined by reporter Joseph Duball, who covers all things data privacy for the International Association of Privacy Professionals. 

The Basics: A growing number of states have adopted their own data privacy laws similar to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. First and foremost among them has been California, which adopted the CA Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), which lawmakers approved in 2018 and which went into effect in 2020. Voters subsequently approved a follow up ballot measure (Prop 24) later that year which enshrines even more protections into the state’s privacy law, including the creation of a dedicated state agency to implement and enforce those laws. 

The new law, the CA Privacy Rights Act, goes into effect in January, 2023 and begins enforcement in July. To that end, regulators on June 8th released their initial set of proposed CPRA rules. These are NOT the final rules by any means, but they are a significant step toward what will eventually be the most stringent state data privacy standard in the U.S.