By a vote of 46-1, the Washington State Senate has passed a new, strict data protection bill. The bill will now move to the Washington House of Representatives for their consideration. The text of this bill is very similar to the European Union’s GDPR that took effect last year. Under this bill, Washington residents would have the right to contact any company that has their personal data on record and access the data in electronic format, have the data deleted or corrected, and opt-out of having any future personal data stored by that company. Assuming this bill passes through the House of Representatives and the Governor’s desk unimpeded, it will become one of the strictest data privacy regulations in the United States.
Read the full text of the bill here. This bill represents a growing trend among U.S. States to create stricter data privacy regulations.
If this bill passes, the proposed effective date is December 31, 2020.