California Pushing Back Against Federal Preemption of Its Priva…
California Pushing Back Against Federal Preemption of Its Priva…
Publish Date: 2026-05-07 14:27:00
Source Domain: www.pymnts.com
California’s dedicated privacy regulator is intensifying its campaign against federal legislation that could override the state’s landmark consumer privacy regime, setting up a new flashpoint in the broader battle between Washington and the states over who will shape the future of digital regulation.
The California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) is preparing a lobbying push against the proposed SECURE Data Act, a federal privacy bill that agency officials warn could preempt major portions of California’s consumer privacy laws and weaken the state’s enforcement authority.
According to a Bloomberg Law report, CPPA Executive Director Tom Kemp plans to travel to Washington this month to press lawmakers, including Republicans, to remove broad federal preemption language from the proposal and strengthen the legislation’s substantive privacy protections.
“You need that when you are looking at the data capture, collection, flows associated with trillion dollar companies,” Kemp told Bloomberg Law. “It’s critical to allow flexibility for the states to decide how they want to supplement, complement the enforcement of the privacy law.”
The fight highlights the increasingly contentious divide between states that have aggressively expanded privacy and AI oversight and a growing federal push for uniform national standards favored by many large businesses. Industry groups and companies have generally supported comprehensive federal privacy legislation on the grounds that a single national framework would reduce compliance burdens created by a patchwork of state rules.
But California officials argue that the SECURE Data Act, at least in its current form, would substantially weaken protections established under statutes including the California Consumer Privacy Act and the state’s Delete Act. The CPPA warned lawmakers in a letter that the bill could strip privacy rights from “tens of millions of people.”
The agency has emerged as one of the…
