Chamber of Commerce Seeks Stay of California Privacy Rules

The California Chamber wants a court to delay the effective date of proposed new California privacy rules until the regulator in charge has completed them and given businesses a full year to operationalize them. The regulator was supposed to issue new rules by July 1, 2022 and to give companies a year to adopt their requirements before beginning enforcement. Instead, the regulator was slow off the mark and didn't release any draft rules until late March. It did not propose any delay in the enforcement deadline for those rules, thus leaving companies with about three months to come into compliance.

Why It Matters

The regulator that issued these rules is a new one -- created by the same new privacy law that took effect in California earlier this year. This is its first public test. We do not know yet how robust their enforcement agenda will be, what their priorities are, or what guidance they will give while companies try to understand and comply with the draft rules. Under these circumstances as well as normal operating conditions, a three-month deadline to process and implement the requirements of their proposed new rules is extremely short. The Chamber has not challenged the substance of the rules, only their effective/enforcement date; but in doing so, it is likely doing a favor for all companies that will be subject to the rules.