Overview
Read how the outcome of the 2024 US election could affect clients in the privacy space. Partners Elliot Golding, Stephen Reynolds, David Saunders, and Alexander Southwell contributed their thoughts.
In Depth
What might 2025 bring at the state level for consumer data privacy laws?
We anticipate that more state consumer privacy laws will be enacted. The question is whether those new laws will mirror existing laws or continue the recent trend of breaking the mold and introducing new consumer rights or compliance obligations.
We are also watching the explosion of sector-specific privacy laws related to, for example, health, biometrics, and children. Health data likely will remain a focus in 2025, but everyone seems to be talking about children’s privacy.
How would a Harris-Walz administration affect your clients?
As we’ve seen during the Biden administration, Democratic presidents are not shy about using Executive Orders to attempt to impose privacy and data security requirements on government contractors. However, the president will generally be less influential than Congress with respect to privacy legislation.
On the enforcement side, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Harris-Walz would likely continue to use its authority to aggressively police privacy at the federal level.
How would a Trump-Vance administration affect your clients?
With respect to privacy legislation, as noted above, the president will be less influential than Congress. However, under a Trump-Vance administration, it is likely that the FTC would retreat from its current, aggressive enforcement posture, which is something that we witnessed during the first Trump administration.
Which provisions in existing state data privacy models do you anticipate will spread to new states in 2025?
Potentially Maryland’s prohibition on selling sensitive personal information or Minnesota’s right of consumers to request a rerun of decisions subject to automated decision making if the inputs were incorrect.
What do you think the impact of state attorneys general will be in a new administration?
In a Trump administration, we would expect more activity and enforcement from Democratic state attorneys general (as we saw during the last Trump administration) but less cooperation with federal regulators (as we’ve increasingly seen during the Biden administration). In a Harris administration, the activity of Republican state attorneys general would likely increase, and close cooperation with federal regulators, particularly the FTC, would likely continue.
What should clients be most focused on from a regulatory, enforcement, and/or litigation perspective with a new administration?
Enforcement is the key, rather than legislation. A new administration will always impact how aggressive federal agencies will be.
