One of the benefits of the federal legal system in the United States is the ability of individual states to experiment with important issues, so as to align their laws with the needs and desires of their residents. Known as the “laboratories of democracy” when it comes to such legal experimentation, state legislatures can use this flexibility in a “race to the bottom,” lowering regulatory barriers to entice investment or job creation. This flexibility can also lead to a balkanization of legal regimes, with jurisdictions taking different, and at times conflicting, approaches to legal issues that expand beyond their borders.

In the realm of data protection, state legislatures have been singularly active over the past two decades, passing dozens of data protection laws in the absence of a generally applicable federal regime with preemptive reach. This began in large measure with the first data breach notification law passed in California in 2002. Within about 15 years, all 50 states had adopted data breach notification laws, but with wide variation in scope and applicability.

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