Twenty States Have Consumer Privacy Laws; More Likely to Come

The push by states to enact comprehensive consumer privacy laws has accelerated in recent years. There’s no national data privacy standard, so it’s vital for businesses to understand their obligations under this dizzying array of requirements. Even if a company doesn’t have a physical presence in a jurisdiction, it can nevertheless be subject to that state’s privacy laws when they process personal data from individuals who reside there.

In 2018, California became the first state to pass a comprehensive data privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act. Over the next few years, adoption of these laws was slow: ...