February 27, 2023 — Letter

The undersigned organizations express opposition to H.R. 1165, The Data Privacy Act of 2023, scheduled for mark-up in Committee this Tuesday, February 28. While we are pleased to see that language in an earlier draft of this bill, which would have repealed Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act (which gives consumers the right to access their own data from a financial service business concerning the product or service they receive from that business), has been removed, we continue to have significant concerns about this bill. Some of our organizations communicated about these concerns earlier this month in an earlier statement prepared for the February 8 Subcommittee hearing entitled “Revamping and
Revitalizing Banking in the 21st Century.”

While claiming to strengthen the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and increase consumer protections, H.R. 1165 actually would result in fewer rights for consumers, because it would deprive them of important – and enforceable – rights under state law, including the laws in over half states that govern credit reporting and in some cases, other types of consumer reporting.

The bill rewrites Section 507 of GLBA to preempt any state or municipal law or rule that regulates financial institutions with respect to “the collection or disclosure of personal information.” The potential scope of this preemption is breathtaking.