SB 690: predation or privacy?

A measure aimed at protecting people’s privacy has instead become one of the most heavily discussed bills of 2026 among California law firms as debate over the proposal has become focused on what some see as a surprising topic: immigration.

The bill, SB 690 by Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Merced), seeks to narrow the scope of the California Invasion of Privacy Act or CIPA, which was approved by the Legislature in 1967 to prohibit analog wiretaps, but lately has been used as the basis for lawsuits over commercial websites.

Aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys have started applying CIPA definitions of illegal wiretaps and old fashioned “pen registers” and “trap and trace devices” to basic web analytic tools like ad trackers and third-party cookies to assert that thousands of businesses across the state are improperly surveilling their customers.

Over the last few years, tens of thousands of business like Howdy Plumbing in Sacramento and Sweet E’s Bakeshop in Van Nuys, nonprofits like the Sacramento Food Bank, healthcare providers like Southern Mono Healthcare in Mammoth Lakes and public agencies like the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Los Angeles have been served with lawsuits or demand letters saying that their websites have violated the law and that they owe thousands or even millions of dollars in damages.

Caballero put forth SB 690 as a means for ending what supporters call predatory lawsuits. The bill has nearly 300 registered supporters, including the California Chamber of Commerce and 53 other chambers of commerce across the state as well as an exceedingly diverse array of business interests from clothing brands and booksellers to medical providers and lawyers.

The Sacramento Bee, ABC 10 and Capitol Public Radio have all done pieces on the legislation and related legal trend, but the bill has received the most attention on law firm websites, where attorneys have written repeatedly about the flood of lawsuits and the potential impact SB 690 could have.

While not quite as long, the list of opponents some 70 strong includes many of the most powerful and influential interests in California politics, such the ACLU, more than half-dozen of the top labor organizations in the state, LGBTQ+ advocates and the Delores Huerta Foundation.

They say SB 690 would inappropriately exempt businesses from the CIPA, undercutting one of the state’s strongest consumer protection laws.

Both sides have taken to framing the debate through the eyes of immigrant entrepreneurs. With the CEO of the National Latino Restaurant association writing in a Capitol Weekly op-ed in March that Latino-owned restaurants are under attack from predatory lawsuits and the director of the California Ranked Choice voting Coalition responding in July that SB 690 exposes California’s immigrant communities digital manipulation and exploitation.

“It’s a false flag,” said Usama Kahf, a partner at the international law firm Fisher Phillips, where he co-chairs the firm’s Privacy and Cyber Practice Group.

Kahf said Fisher Phillips represented more than 300 defendants in CIPA lawsuits. He testified in support of SB 690 at a July 1 hearing before the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee and authored an op-ed rebuking bill opponents for bringing immigration into the debate.

“Not a single lawsuit related to CIPA involved immigration,” Kahf told Capitol Weekly. “The person who introduced that just wanted to shut it down.”

Opponents disagree. Robert Herrell, the executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, said immigration and even women’s reproductive rights are intrinsic to the SB 690 debate if you zoom out a bit more for greater context.

While SB 690 has been framed as a bill to address a California-specific problem, Herrell said it actually fits into a larger effort to rollback state wiretap laws enacted in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s across the nation. That effort, he said, is aimed at giving tech giants like Meta the “unfettered ability to share and monetize and surveil their customers.”

Herrell said the data they could get access to include people’s immigration status or reproductive health stats. Such widespread incursions into individuals’ privacy are dangerous under any administration in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., he said, but especially so when Donald Trump is in the White House.

That’s why Herrell calls SB 690 “the ultimate Trojan horse proposal.” He said the supporters are making off like this is about stopping vexatious litigant, when it’s really about tearing down vital privacy protections in a particularly fraught time in American history.

Herrell said he feels confident that his view of the situation is accurate because his organization has proposed alternate changes to address the predatory lawsuits, but they’ve been rejected, even though their proposal was based on successful changes made to combat abusive lawsuits filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Both sides agree that the deluge in frivolous lawsuits filed under the ADA in previous years are an apt comparison to what’s happening with CIPA now.

But Herrell was clear that he believes SB 690 is trying to do something else entirely, namely give giant tech companies access to all kinds of personal information on individuals and possibly even pave the way for them to overturn bothersome legal precedents, like in the 2025 Frasco v. Flo Health, Inc. case, which found Meta was liable under CIPA for sharing sensitive information about users’ menstrual cycles and ovulation obtained from the Flo App period tracker.

In fact, Herrell called the fight over SB 690 one of the most important issues before the Legislature during the end of session.

Before the July 1 hearing, SB 690 was recast to only address predatory lawsuits filed on the basis of the pen register section of CIPA. Kahf, the SB 690 proponent, said that only addresses about a third of the lawsuits filed under the law. Other lawsuits cite different sections of CIPA.

Kahf said the narrower version of SB 690 still represents progress, but it could create more problems in the future either because people might think the issue is resolved or because plaintiff’s attorneys could argue that since the Legislature didn’t address other sections of CIPA lawsuits filed under them are legitimate.

“Solving only part of the problem could backfire,” he said. “It could make it worse.”

SB 690 is on suspense in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. A hearing that could potentially take it off suspense is scheduled for Thursday, August 103th.