Massachusetts Lawmakers Unanimously Pass Comprehensive Privacy …
Massachusetts Lawmakers Unanimously Pass Comprehensive Privacy …
Publish Date: 2026-06-09 14:41:00
Source Domain: www.pymnts.com
Massachusetts is poised to become the 21st state to enact comprehensive privacy protections after the state House voted 146-0 this week to pass the Consumer Data Privacy Act. The House vote follows a similarly unanimous approval of a separate privacy bill by the Senate back in September. According to TechCrunch, the two bills will now be combined in the Senate before being sent to the desk of Gov. Maura Healey, who is expected to sign it.
The statute will apply to companies that handle or process the personal data of more than 100,000 consumers, a higher threshold than some other state privacy law, but low enough to capture midsized startups and enterprises as well as Silicon Valley tech giants.
Like the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Massachusetts law would prohibit the sale or sharing of sensitive information without an individual’s consent, including biometric and health data, as well as data containing markers of their religion, immigration status and sexual orientation. It also provides residents the right to know, delete and opt out of certain data uses. Unlike similar statues in other states, however, the Massachusetts law provides consumers a private right of action against large data collectors in certain circumstances.
The Bay State’s statue also goes farther than many other states in banning the sale or sharing of users’ precise location data, whether they are residents of Massachusetts or merely visitors. By covering out-of-state as well as in-state users, the provision effectively amounts to a blanket ban on the sale of precise location data collected anywhere in the state.
Per Startup Fortune, that provision could create a significant compliance risk for many startups and enterprises that collect or resell precise location and movement data, such as retail foot-traffic analytics firms, audience measurement services and advertising agencies.
Read more: EU-US Data Privacy Framework Facing New Stress as Old Questions Resurface
The sale…
