Ninth Circuit blocks portion of California privacy law News
Ninth Circuit blocks portion of California privacy law

[JURIST] A panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled [opinion] Monday that portion of a California law giving consumers the right to block banks from selling their personal information to other institutions is preempted by federal law. The court considered whether the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) [text] trumps the California Financial Information Privacy Act (CFIPA) [text] in the exchange of information among financial institutes, and reversed a lower court ruling [American Bankers Ass’n v. Lockyer, PDF] that it does not. The court reasoned that the FCRA, which has less stringent "information swapping” provisions, preempts portions of the CFIPA, and remanded the case to the district court to decide if any consumer information can be shielded from affiliated companies under the state law. AP has more.