COPRA and CDPA

COPRA and CDPA

While still very early in the legislative process, there is renewed momentum to enact a federal data privacy law. On November 26, 2019, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced a new federal privacy bill entitled the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA). Days later, on November 29, 2019, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) unveiled the proposed United States Consumer Data Privacy Act (CDPA). There are a handful of significant differences between the two bills (e.g., state preemption and establishing a private right of action), but they take similar stances on a number of topics (e.g., security practices, express data subject consent prior to processing, transparency), signaling bipartisan alignment on many of the fundamental issues that would be addressed by a sweeping piece of federal data privacy legislation.