By Charlotte Lunday

On March 2, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) into law. The VCDPA, which takes effect January 1, 2023, will look familiar to those who work with the GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act and Privacy Rights Act (CCPA and CPRA, respectively). Companies that have already invested in GDPR and CCPA/CPRA compliance will find that most VCDPA obligations are similar to what they have already addressed in some form for Europe and California.  But the new Virginia law also contains some novel provisions, such as excluding a broad range of “publicly available information” from the definition of personal data, contractual requirements for sharing de-identified data, and establishing an appeals process for data rights requests.