The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) currently has limited carve-outs for personal information (PI) collected from a job applicant, employee, owner, director, officer, medical staff member, or independent contractor of a business acting in such capacity (including, without limitation, communications, emergency contact and benefits PI) (HR data). An even broader exception applies to B-to-B communications and related PI (e.g., vendor, supplier and business customer contacts and communications) (B-to-B data). As a result, businesses subject to the CCPA are not currently required to honor CCPA rights requests received from persons concerning HR data and B-to-B data. These carve-outs are set to sunset on January 1, 2023, when the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which substantially amends the CCPA, goes into full effect, at which point HR data and B-to-B data will be fully subject to all of the requirements of the CCPA/CPRA. Many business administrators had hoped that either the California legislature would extend the HR data exceptions (or maybe even make them permanent), or a federal law that limited data subject rights to traditional consumers would pass and preempt CCPA/CPRA. It is now clear that the former is impossible and the latter is highly unlikely. Accordingly, many companies have a lot to do by year-end to prepare to stand up a CCPA/CPRA program for HR data and B-to-B data.
