On January 1, 2023, California will become the only state to make blanket application of consumer data privacy laws to employment information, including human resources data. On that date, the existing exemption under the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA), for employee and business to business data will sunset, leaving employers, employees, and courts in the difficult position of having to apply a comprehensive statutory framework that was not created to address these relationships.
By way of background, the CPRA was designed as a follow-up to legislation passed in 2018 the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), that was primarily intended to address the use of consumer data for targeted advertisements by tech companies. Employee data was never really the target of the CCPA or now the CPRA.
