By Margaret Foster

A year and a half ago, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the California Consumer Protection Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2020. Though the bill was simultaneously hailed as a “groundbreaking,” “extremely powerful,” “landmark law,” and criticized as a “punitive . . . mistake,” there’s no dispute that it is currently the strongest privacy law in America, garnering comparisons to the European Union’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Kari Paul, California’s Groundbreaking Privacy Law Takes Effect in January. What Does It Do?, The Guardian (Dec. 30, 2019); Zack Whittaker, Silicon Valley Is Terrified of California’s Privacy Law. Good., TechCrunch (Sept. 19, 2019); Natasha Singer, Group Behind California Privacy Law Aims to Strengthen It, The New York Times (Sept. 24, 2019) . . .