The Biden administration reportedly has called for all people at least 18 to be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine by April 19, 2021, two weeks earlier than its prior goal of May 1, and less than a week away. Most states have already done so. Without the barriers created by state-by-state priority rules, the rate of vaccinations is likely to increase, hopefully helping to contain a fourth wave in COVID-19 cases observed in recent…

COVID-19 drove many formerly in-person interactions onto a variety of video conferencing platforms.  But as millions of vaccinations are administered each day, and case numbers decline, it’s now possible to imagine and plan for the time when conducting business over video will no longer be mandatory. For many organizations, though, COVID-19 has led to an epiphany that will very likely outlast the pandemic: Many aspects of work can be conducted remotely, without any drop in…

In mid-March, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed into law the Cybersecurity Affirmative Defense Act (HB80) (“the Act”), an amendment to Utah’s data breach notification law, creating several affirmative defenses for persons (defined below) facing a cause of action arising out of a breach of system security, and establishing the requirements for asserting such a defense. In short, the Act seeks to incentivize individuals, associations, corporations, and other entities (“persons”) to maintain reasonable safeguards…

One of the industries perhaps hardest hit by the coronavirus, the travel industry, received welcomed news late last week in the form of CDC guidance stating that people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can resume domestic travel and do not need to get tested for COVID-19 before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel. According to the guidance, released on April 2, 2021, fully vaccinated people need not get tested before leaving the United States (unless…

In a decision certain to have significant impact on Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class action litigation, today the U.S. Supreme Court concluded narrowly that to qualify as an “automatic telephone dialing system”, a device must be able to either “store a telephone number using a random or sequential generator or to produce a telephone number using a random or sequential number generator”.  The underlying decision of the Ninth Circuit is reversed and remanding. Back…

On March 11th, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law HB 1143, prohibiting employers from requiring a candidate for employment or an employee to have a device implanted or otherwise incorporated into their body, as a condition of employment. The Indiana law will take effect July 1, 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic caused many companies to instruct employees to work-from-home for the foreseeable future, which resulted in a spike in the use of employee monitoring …

Colorado recently became the latest state to consider a comprehensive consumer privacy law.  On March 19, 2021, Colorado State Senators Rodriguez and Lundeen introduced SB 21-190, entitled “an Act Concerning additional protection of data relating to personal privacy”. Following California’s bold example of the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) effective since January 2020, Virginia recently passed its own robust privacy law, the Consumer Data Protection Act (“CDPA”), and New York, as well…