Maine Committee Opts for Democrats' Privacy Bill with Data Minimization
One of Maine’s two competing comprehensive privacy bills failed to clear the Joint Judiciary Committee during a work session Friday while the other bill was passed as amended.
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LD-1088 by Rep. Rachel Henderson (R) took a notice-and-consent approach based on the common state model (see 2505140060). It failed with seven members voting to not pass the bill and only one voting for it.
Henderson’s bill was in competition with LD-1822, introduced by Judiciary House Chair Amy Kuhn (D) and Senate Chair Anne Carney (D), which contains data minimization principles based on the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act (see 2504290048). The bill passed the committee as amended with a 7-1 vote.
“I think the best way for a comprehensive data privacy law to pass this year is that one of these measures move forward,” whether it be hers or Kuhn's, Henderson said.
Kuhn's amendment to LD-1822 made several small changes to her bill. One pushed back the proposed effective date of the bill to Sept. 1, 2026, so that if there are any issues with Maryland’s Act --- set to go into effect Oct. 1, 2025 -- the legislature would have time to fix Maine’s version (see 2505230037).
Based on discussion during the committee’s last work session, Kuhn said she slightly changed the language under the bill’s reasonableness statute. She also said she slightly modified the language regarding controllers being able to object to a sub-processor contract, which could have created unnecessary delay and burden. The latter was "something that came from the Business Software Alliance that I thought didn't really do any harm,” Kuhn said.