Businesses in California are exempt from obtaining prior consent from minors before selling or sharing their personal data, following a veto from Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday. The vetoed bill, A.B. 1949, proposed by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, aimed to require individuals aged 16 and 17 to opt-in to data sharing, aligning them with younger children under state privacy laws. Without this legislative change, businesses can continue to include minors aged 16 and 17 alongside adults in the current opt-out privacy framework.
The measure did not gain the necessary support to shift the current data privacy protocol for minors, thereby maintaining the status quo wherein businesses only need to comply with opt-out requests post-transaction for older minors. For more details on the veto and its implications, see the full analysis on Bloomberg Law.