Effective immediately, the California Office of Administrative Law (OAL) approved final regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on August 14, 2020. The final text of the regulations is available here. The CCPA grants California consumers robust data privacy rights and control over their personal information. Companies that do business with California consumers now risk penalties for noncompliance.

Further, on August 30, 2020, the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 1281, extending the CCPA’s employee exemption and the CCPA’s business-to-business exemption by one year in order to provide those businesses impacted by CCPA additional time to implement policies and procedures in order to comply with the strict requirements of CCPA in those particular scenarios.  Following the end of this safe harbor, businesses will have to consider and protect employees’ and job applicants’ personal data with the same level of care as their consumers.