Roundup: National data privacy law debated, homicides down and mass protests banned in three states

It’s Saturday, April 20, and we’d like to welcome you to the weekly State and Local Roundup. We start in Congress. For nearly six years now, states have slowly been plugging a gaping hole where a national data privacy standard should be. As Congress has failed to advance legislation, states have written and passed their own comprehensive data privacy laws.

Starting with California in 2018, more than a dozen states today have their own laws, with Maine and Maryland advancing legislation in just the past few weeks.

But all those laws could soon be moot if Congress finally acts on its latest version of a national data privacy law.?

At a hearing Wednesday before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, lawmakers heard from advocates and experts on several pieces of privacy legislation. The discussion, though, mainly focused on the recently introduced American Privacy Rights Act, which would establish national standards and preempt states’ comprehensive privacy laws.

In the draft text of the bill, the law pledges to “establish a uniform national privacy and data security standard in the United States to prevent administrative costs burdens placed on interstate commerce.” It also promises to “expressly preempt laws of a State or political subdivision of a State,” although it would not preempt state laws on consumer protections, employee privacy, student privacy, data breaches, public records and criminal law, among others.

But the bill has state leaders worried. Ahead of the House subcommittee hearing to debate it, the California Privacy Protection Agency, or CPPA, sent a letter outlining what they deemed “weaknesses” in the bill.

Continue reading here.

News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

• VIOLENT CRIME: Homicides are plummeting in American cities. Homicides in cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump, reports the Wall Street Journal. Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023. The declines in 2024, on top of last year’s drop, mirror the steep declines in homicides of the late 1990s. If the trend continues, the U.S. could be on pace for a year like 2014, which saw the lowest homicide rate since the 1960s. However, police officials and researchers cautioned that crime trends aren’t always consistent, and future homicide rates are difficult to predict. Some cities, like Denver, Los Angeles, and Portland, Ore., reported rises in homicides as of early April, but such increases are outliers.?
• FIRST AMENDMENT: The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states.The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe, a decision that leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.
• ELECTIONS: Wisconsin elections chief receives increased security. Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top elections official, is receiving heightened security protection. Elections administrators say the extra security, which was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, is unusual, and comes after nearly four years of targeted attacks on election officials across the country, with particular attention focused on swing states whose results tipped the margin of the 2020 presidential contest toward President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly, and without evidence, pointed to those states as hotbeds of voter fraud. As recently as last week, Trump maintained he won Wisconsin, which he lost by about 20,000 votes in 2020. Nationwide, election workers have faced threats, intimidation and harassment that has led to high turnover of election officials and a few dozen federal charges. Wisconsin state lawmakers recently passed a bill that increases penalties for attacks on election workers.
• GUNS: Suicides make up majority of gun deaths, but are overlooked in gun violence debate. When gun violence in America is discussed, people typically think about mass shootings, homicides or even domestic violence. But, in fact, the majority of gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides. In 2023, more than 42,967 people died from gun-related injuries. Over half of those deaths were suicides. Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a research group that advocates for stricter gun laws, says big cities have typically had the highest gun death rates. But that trend has started to shift. Last year, York, a small city in Pennsylvania, had a higher per capita gun death rate than Philadelphia, Garber said. Easy access to guns in America is one contributor to the issue.

Picture of the Week

The Missouri Department of Transportation testified to a state House committee late last week that there is a correlation between the rise in motorcycle fatalities and the repeal of the universal helmet law in 2020, reported to the Columbia Missourian. Motorcycle fatalities have increased 47% since 2020, and 2023 was the deadliest year on record for motorcycle fatalities, with 174 deaths, according to the department. “We’ve seen that in other states,” said Jon Nelson, assistant to the state highway safety and traffic engineer at MoDOT. “Whenever they’ve repealed a helmet law, [there are] similar increases.” In 2020, a legislative change allowed motorcyclists 26 and older to ride without a helmet, so long as they could provide proof of health insurance.

What They're Saying

“I actually find it hard to believe we’re in the city where George Floyd happened. It’s very easy to scare people with crime. It’s a tactic that people have used forever and it’s starting to work again.”

—Mary Moriarty, Minneapolis’s top prosecutor, on the criticism and pushback she has received since taking office. Moriarty won the top job last year after persuading voters shaken by the murder of George Floyd that she could improve public safety by reining in police misconduct and making the criminal justice system less punitive. But her tenure has been turbulent, reports The New York Times. The attorney general of Minnesota took over a murder case from her office last spring after concluding that it had offered an overly lenient plea deal to a juvenile defendant. This fall, two judges took the unusual step of rejecting plea deals offered by her office, deeming them too permissive for violent crimes. And after Moriarty this year charged a state trooper with murder in the shooting of a motorist who drove away during a traffic stop, criticism mounted. Moriarty is one of a handful of left-leaning prosecutors elected in recent years promising to overhaul justice systems by jailing fewer people, holding the police accountable for misconduct and reducing racial inequities. She is also one of a handful that has met strong resistance as she’s sought to implement these policies.

ICYMI

Feds move to make gov websites more accessible to people with disabilities It’s the first time the federal government has ever issued rules clarifying how the more than 30-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act applies online. But the new rules come with a hefty price tag for state and local governments. BY CHRIS TEALE

How collaboration is changing North Carolina, one project at a time

States that want to tap universities and philanthropies to find solutions to policy challenges using the best research, evidence and data should look at how one state mastered the communications and logistics essential for effective partnerships. BY KATHERINE BARRETT & RICHARD GREENE

Can the snarky ‘Save Our Yachts’ campaign save Washington’s capital gains tax?

The long-fought-for and hard-won tax has survived its legal challenges. Now it must survive the ballot.

BY ELIZABETH DAIGNEAU

Why a lawsuit may be state and local governments’ best chance to cut insulin pricesThe skyrocketing cost of insulin hits employee health plans and limits governments’ ability to finance other projects, such as infrastructure improvements. The multidistrict litigation aims to fix that.BY KAITLYN LEVINSON