Privacy law scholar and professor Daniel Solove offers some thoughts on the proposed federal privacy law, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA)
… The ADPPA bill itself isn’t too bad. In my view, Congress is generally a D student when writing laws, and the ADPPA is a B+.
The ADPPA has a lot of the standard elements of privacy laws, and it advances the ball. It even has a private right of action . . . something that I’m surprised managed to survive this long. A private right of action is a very important enforcement mechanism, as Professor Lauren Scholz persuasively argues in her recent article. Perhaps it remains in there because the U.S. Supreme Court has severely limited private rights of action in privacy laws in Spokeo v. Robins and TransUnion v. Ramirez. Cynically, I wonder whether some in Congress are okay with the private right of action because they know courts will make it disappear when people actually try to use it.
Read Dan’s full column and his discussion of the concerns that it will pre-empt stronger state privacy laws at TeachPrivacy.
Updated July 30: Dan has some more thoughts about this topic and clarifies some of his earlier piece. You can read his further thoughts here.