- Delaware Governor Matt Meyer, in collaboration with AG Kathy Jennings and state lawmakers, has signed two data privacy bills, addressing data privacy and consumer information protections.
- House Bills 380 and 381, which go into effect January 1, 2027, expand Delaware’s existing data privacy framework by mandating that businesses that process data of at least 10,000 consumers are subject to the state’s data privacy requirements, including provisions addressing consumers’ access to and control over personal information. The legislation requires protection of sensitive data being sold, unless strictly necessary to a product or service, with clear notice before the sale and with the consumer’s consent, and the bills also modify the existing exclusion of employee data, including data that may be used in employment-related technologies such as AI resume screeners, interview scoring tools, and reports that determine hiring, promotion, discipline, and termination.
- Additionally, the bills expand the scope of protection for the categories that require opt-in consent to process, adding national origin, citizenship and immigration status, pregnancy and treatment status, status as transgender or nonbinary, neural data, financial account credentials, and government-ID numbers (Social Security, passport, state ID, driver’s license). The legislation also addresses inferences derived from other data when those inferences are used to identify or determine a sensitive category.