Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce held the third of three scheduled meetings ahead of a release of a new draft of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA), which is edging closer to being the first, comprehensive federal privacy legislation to be signed into law in the United States.

There is a clear need for greater privacy protections for Americans. Big tech firms are collecting huge volumes of sensitive data on Americans and there are few restrictions on how consumer data can be collected, used, and shared. There is mounting concern over the collection and use of the data of minors, the serving of targeted advertisements to children and teenagers based on the personal data collected by tech firms, and the sheer volume of data that is being collected on all Americans.

Currently, privacy regulations are implemented at the state level, and they can vary vastly across the country. ADPPA seeks to address this by placing restrictions on the collection and use of consumer data at the federal level and replacing the current patchwork of state privacy laws. ADPPA was approved by the Committee on Energy and Commerce on July 20, 2022, with a 53-2 vote but failed to advance to the House or Senate floors in the last Congress. Support may be strong, but in its current form, that support is not strong enough to get ADPAA over the line and signed into law.

The March 1, 2023, Committee hearing restarted the discussion about federal privacy legislation, with Subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) and Ranking Member Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) stating there is a desperate need to get federal privacy legislation signed into law in the present Congress. There was consensus among subcommittee members that federal privacy legislation is required, and that the ADPPA could well be the path forward. That said, there are different views on what privacy legislation should include and it was clear that significant changes are needed for ADPPA to stand a chance of being signed into law.

The Committee held another hearing on March 23, 2023, that was focused on hugely popular apps and how Congress can safeguard American data, address data sharing risks, and protect children from online harm. TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, testified before the Committee and was grilled for hours but appeared unable to persuade the Committee that TikTok was safe and secure, and was not collecting data and passing that information to the Chinese government. Legislation has been proposed specifically to address this threat. The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act was introduced in March 2023 and would give the government the authority to ban IT products such as TikTok if they are thought to pose a national security risk. While the Biden Administration is in favor of the RESTRICT Act, it fails to address domestic data privacy issues and the current digital Wild West where there are few rules on how consumer data can be collected, used, and shared.

A new draft of ADPPA is expected imminently, with Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) reportedly penning the last few updates to the bill, which is believed to incorporate significant changes. One of the major sticking points is the preemption of state laws, which backers say is vital for small businesses that are disproportionately burdened by the current patchwork of state laws. However, progressive states with much more stringent privacy protections – California for example – would see consumer privacy protections weakened by ADPPA, and with the privacy law setting protections in stone, there would be no way to improve protections in the future once ADPPA is signed into law. Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA) has already stated that she would not support ADPPA in its current form for this reason.

Whether the new version of ADPPA will address the sticking points sufficiently to retain the current bipartisan support and win over skeptics remains to be seen, but that will certainly be required to get ADPPA through the Republican House and Democrat Senate and signed into law.

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