california capitol Sacramento State Capitol building on Capitol Way. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ ALM)

Corporate-backed efforts to limit the reach of California's Consumer Privacy Act through legislative amendments ran into a political buzzsaw Tuesday as a state Senate committee killed one key bill and handcuffed another that organized labor had opposed.

The author of a third bill that would have allowed certain sales of personal data to government agencies shelved the measure without a vote after the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a critical analysis of the legislation.

The demise of the bills over the course of a 12-hour committee hearing Tuesday marked the first significant defeat for tech companies, business groups and their lobbies, which have been trying to redefine aspects of the landmark data privacy law since its hasty passage last year. The law goes into effect in 2020.

The bills cruised through the state Assembly this spring only to hit a roadblock: Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jackson has sought to add stronger enforcement measures to the privacy act, trying unsuccessfully earlier this year to give consumers, and not just the attorney general, the right to sue over violations. On Tuesday she called the law “a weak cup of tea” that would have been “turned into water” if some of the amending bills had passed.

Tuesday's marathon committee hearing had a special urgency with Wednesday's deadline for moving bills out of legislative policy committees looming. The most contentious bill debated in the committee's evening session was AB 873, a Chamber of Commerce-backed measure that would have broadened the definition of de-identified information—information that does not fall under the restrictions of the Consumer Privacy Act.

Bill author Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, called the law's current definition of de-identified data “unworkable” and warned her colleagues that if the state doesn't “get it right” with fixes to the privacy law “there will be federal pre-emption.”

Jackson, however, called Irwin's bill “dangerous” and asked the author to take a series of amendments. Irwin refused, leading the committee to reject the measure on a 3-3 vote.

The committee also voted to amend a bill that would have exempted employers from some data-collecting provisions in the privacy law. AB 25 will now require employers to tell workers what type of information they're collecting about them and why, although they won't have to share specific details about what they've gathered.

The amendment was a nod to organized labor and privacy groups, who had argued that the bill's original employment-based exemptions would have effectively condoned companies surreptitiously monitoring their workers through apps, computer keystroke logs or GPS tracking.

The workplace disclosure provision expires in January 2021, giving business groups, privacy advocates and labor unions a year to negotiate more narrowly tailored language governing employee data collection.

The Judiciary Committee on Tuesday also approved legislation allowing businesses to collect customer information through loyalty programs after the bill's author agreed to an amendment banning the sale of that data to third parties.

The Consumer Privacy Act-related bills that survived Tuesday's hearing will now be heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee after the Legislature returns from its summer recess.

Read more:

Inside the 11th-Hour Maneuvering as Digital Privacy Law Faces Key Votes

Senate Scraps Bill Giving Consumers Power to Sue for Data-Privacy Violations

What Big Law, Tech Leaders Say About California's New Data-Privacy Law