Businesses often include mandatory arbitration clauses in their pre-dispute dealings with customers to prevent costly consumer class actions in favor of streamlined (often individual) arbitration.  The Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) makes such arbitration agreements “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.”  Relying on the FAA, the Supreme Court has defended business enforcement of such clauses against state- and judge-made exceptions.  For…

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a preview of its plans for a standard Privacy Framework this past week.  The purpose of the Framework is to help organizations better manage privacy risks. The Privacy Framework would breakdown privacy functions into five categories: identify the context of processing, protect private data, control data through data management, inform individuals about data processing, and respond to adverse breach events. Also, organizations would be able to…

The current and future definition of what qualifies as an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS or autodialer) remains a hotly debated and evaluated issue for every company placing calls and texts, or designing dialer technology, as well as the litigants and jurists already mired in litigation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).  Last year, the D.C. Circuit struck down the FCC’s ATDS definition in ACA International v. FCC, Case No. 15-1211 (D.C. Cir. 2019). …

Last week, the California Assembly’s Standing Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection held a hearing to discuss the California Consumer Privacy Act. While many panelists from the private sector pointed out problems with the law, a few panelists defended the law, and some suggested that it didn’t go far enough. For example, Stacey Schesser, the Supervising Deputy Attorney General for the Privacy Unit in the Consumer Law Section of the Office of the California Attorney…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced this week that it would not update its anti-spam rule, completing the agency’s first 10-year review of the regulation. The FTC last updated the rule, known as the CAN-SPAM Rule, in 2008. The rule requires, among other things, that commercial e-mail messages have a mechanism for allowing the recipient to opt out of future messages. As part of the FTC’s review process, the FTC sought comments on whether the…