[Originally published in Orange County Lawyer Magazine, May 2019, Vol. 61 No.5.,by Lily Li and Matthew Wegner; Image Credit: kmicican from pixabay.com]

Should Putative Class Members Opt-In Before Their Personal Information Is Disclosed in California Consumer Privacy Act Litigation?

In 2020, the nation’s toughest data privacy law will take effect in California. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) imposes harsh restrictions on companies seeking to sell consumers’ data, including statutory penalties for any breaches of data. This legislation was spurred by public outrage against the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and Equifax, Target, and Yahoo data hacks, and reflects a growing trend to protect consumer data privacy.

As with so many legislative and judicial movements in California—for example, the Save-On decision, which ushered in a wave of wage-and-hour class actions in the early 2000s, or Business & Professions Code section 17200, which before Proposition 64 was tacked-on to countless consumer class actions—the CCPA is likely to usher in a host of new class action litigation as plaintiffs (and their attorneys) seek to recover statutory damages for data privacy violations.