Mont. Senate Unanimously Passes Privacy Law Update

The House will be next to consider SB-297 by Sen. Daniel Zolnikov (R), who was the author of the Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act that took effect last October.

SB-297 aims to tighten and clarify Montana’s original law as other states pass “better and better” privacy laws and Congress continues not to pass a federal statute, Zolnikov said at an earlier, Friday floor session, before senators voted unanimously to move the bill to its final reading.

As amended in the Judiciary Committee last week (see 2502190028), SB-297 would reduce the law’s application threshold to say it applies to for-profit entities that control or process personal data of at least 25,000 Montana consumers or control or process data of at least 15,000 consumers and derive more than 25% of its revenue from selling personal data. Current law uses the figures 50,000 and 25,000, respectively.

SB-297 also seeks to tighten an exemption for financial institutions by exempting data rather than entities covered by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Also, whereas the existing law exempts all nonprofits, the new version would exempt only nonprofits fighting insurance fraud. In addition, the bill would add child protections like those in Connecticut’s comprehensive privacy law. It would cut in half the comprehensive privacy law’s 60-day right to cure, among other changes (see 2502130054).