©2025 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com 2025 Cal-Peculiarities | 75 4.16 Email Usage California employers can minimize employee expectations of privacy by issuing clear written policies. Some employees might expect to have privacy in their electronic communications, even when enabled by the employer’s technology,127 but the Court of Appeal has held that an employee’s communications to her attorney on her work computer, via work email, were not confidential and thus were not protected by the attorney-client privilege, even though the employee had used her company-issued private password and had deleted the email messages.128 The employee had no reasonable expectation of privacy, because her employer had a written policy, which she had signed, stating that company technology resources should be used only for company business, that employees must not use company resources to send or receive personal emails, and that the company would monitor its computers for compliance with the policy. 4.17 California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020) The CCPA is highly detailed legislation intended to further California’s constitutional right to privacy by giving “consumers”129 concrete ways to control how their personal information is used by covered businesses.130 The CCPA regulations provide guidance on implementation.131 Employers’ obligations under this legislation must be considered holistically with other obligations (e.g., the duty to protect personal information outlined in § 4.8.2). Effective on January 1, 2023, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) amended the CCPA to eliminate the CCPA’s exemption for employee personal information. Under the CPRA amendments, whether or not they are in California, businesses covered132 by the legislation are required to treat job applicants, employees, directors, officers, independent contractors, and other members of the workforce as "consumers" as defined in the CCPA.133 This legislation requires employers to (1) provide comprehensive information to employees, candidates, and others about personal information handling practices; (2) facilitate the exercise of rights by such individuals to request certain specifics about the employer’s practices; (3) delete personal information; and (4) limit the use of certain types of information and for certain purposes (all of which will implicate the employer’s legitimate uses of such information for purposes outlined elsewhere in this book). Under the CCPA, California consumers, including applicants, employees, and independent contractors, have the right to (1) be provided notice prior to their data being collected; (2) ask a business to disclose what personal information it has collected; (3) know what personal information is being sold or disclosed and to whom134; (4) request and receive a copy of all of the above information in a readily useable format; (5) correct inaccurate personal information135; (6) request that the company delete their personal information (the right to be forgotten)136; (7) opt out of the sale of their personal information; (8) restrict the use of their “sensitive personal information” (if the purpose of the collection is to infer characteristics);137 and (9) be free from retaliation for exercising any of the CCPA rights. These rights are addressed in more detail below. Notice Requirements Under the CCPA, covered businesses are required to notify “consumers,” in advance of collection, of the categories of personal information the business will collect, for what purposes, whether the personal information has or will be shared (and the categories of third parties with whom it is shared), and what rights the consumers have with regard to such information, along with certain other specific requirements.138 Consumer Rights
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