Legal Update - Privacy Bills in Minnesota, Massachusetts

Two bills which would have placed significant extra admin burdens on researchers working with respondent incentives have been dropped in Minnesota, while Massachusetts is proceeding with legislation which will ban companies from selling their users' precise location data.

The Minnesota proposals, H.F. 4445 and S.F. 4689, would have restricted the use of AI-like automated decision systems regarding research subjects who receive incentives, and added a new layer of data privacy restrictions, enforced via private litigation. The bills lapsed when the state's legislative session closed on May 18th. Howard Feinberg, SVP Advocacy of the Insights Association (IA), which opposed the bills, said they would have 'dramatically limited the use of AI-enabled and automated systems commonly used in market research, including recruiting, performance evaluation, incentive setting, and panel management.'

Although intended to regulate employers and workers, the bills included paid respondents in the definition of the latter, as with other recent legislation. Banning or restriction of automated systems for administering incentives would have required a designated internal reviewer to investigate and independently corroborate decisions affecting individual research participants. 'IA continues to believe the insights industry was never the intended target of this legislation,' notes Fienberg, adding, 'We will continue engaging with Minnesota policymakers to ensure that market research participants and insights activities are clearly excluded from any future versions of these proposals.'


Meanwhile in Massachusetts, lawmakers have voted for privacy protections giving residents and visitors to the state new rights over accessing and deleting the data held on them by big tech giants, as well as banning companies from selling their users' precise location data. The latest Consumer Data Privacy Act, focusing on companies that handle or process the personal data of more than 100,000 consumers, was passed unanimously on Thursday, will be combined with other terms in the Senate, and sent to the state governor's office to be signed into law at an as-yet undetermined date. The US does not have a federal privacy law, leaving individual states to apply rulings to their own citizens.

The bills have been welcomed by consumer privacy groups.