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Advocacy & Legislation

We Need Your Help!

If you came to one of the town halls, you heard me (Monique) say that it only takes 3-5 people to contact their legislator for a legislator to realize they need to pay extra attention to a particular issue. You can quite literally make or break a piece of legislation by participating in the process. So, what are key things you can do?

  • Sign up for action alerts below, particularly those from VPIRG.
  • Keep an eye on your email as I’ll send updates to the list of folks who registered for events.
  • Reach out to your State Representative, State Senator, Lt. Governor, and Governor to let them know you’re paying attention and want strong privacy and artificial intelligence legislation to pass. If you want to direct them to talk to me (Rep Monique Priestley), please feel free to do so.
  • Share your stories with me via email and let me know if you want them to be attributed or anonymous.
  • If you have questions/concerns/etc., please feel free to reach out to have a call or coffee.
  • Tell your friends about our town halls and have regular conversations about what you learned with friends, family members, and other Vermonters!
  • If you tell your friends and they want to host a town hall or group conversation, please reach out to us!

Sign Up for Action Alerts

Strong Comprehensive Privacy Bill for 2025-2026

S.71 As Amended by House Commerce & Economic Development on May 30, 2025

What’s the deal on this one? Short answer: it’s been through a lot. S.71 started as a companion copy of H.208. When industry lobbyists said they’d refuse to engage with the House on H.208 and said they’d just attack the bill in the Senate, we asked the Senate to start the bill instead. Because the bill started off strong, it was stalled so we had the Senate do a strike-all and replace the contents with the Industry Bill (S.93). S.71 passed the Senate as a copy of S.93. Once it got back to the House, we did a strike-all amendment in House Commerce to reset the language to the strong language. S.71 as amended on 5/30/25 is a strong consumer protection privacy bill and it also made several adjustments around applicability, thresholds, private right of access eligibility, and data minimization in order to accommodate concerns from industry. This is the bill version we need public support to rally around.

Weak Comprehensive Privacy Bill for 2025-2026

S.93 As Introduced in the Senate

What’s the deal on this one? Short answer: it’s the Industry Bill. It looks like a copy of what passed in Connecticut a few years ago (which has since been amended to be stronger and close some loopholes), except that there’s a clause that strips Vermonters of existing rights afforded to them under the Consumer Protection Act.

Additional Consumer Tech Protection Bills for 2025-2026

  • H.160 Creating a Right to Repair for Medical Devices
  • H.161 The Vermont Fair Repair Act
  • H.211 Data Brokers and Personal Information
  • H.262 Restricting Electronic Monitoring of Employees and the Use of Employment-Related Automated Decision Systems
  • H.340 Regulating Developers and Deployers of Certain Automated Decision Systems
  • H.341 Oversight and Safety Standards for Developers and Deployers of Inherently Dangerous Artificial Intelligence Systems
  • H.342 Protecting the Personal Information of Certain Public Servants
  • H.360 Privacy Protections for Mobile Identification
  • H.366 Neurological Rights
  • H.387 Creating a Property Right for an Individual’s Personal Characteristics
  • H.388 Protection of an Individual’s Digital Replica
  • H.389 Restricting the Use of Artificial Intelligence to Affect Rental Housing Pricing and Availability
  • H.390 Restrictions on Digital Advertising Brokers
  • H.391 Disclosure of Transactions Involving Personally Identifiable Information
  • H.520 Right of Users to Control Their Social Media Data

Celebrating Wins

2025 Vermont Age Appropriate Design Code

This legislation has very strict data minimization and data privacy standards for minors under 18. It establishes and expectation of high privacy settings by default, disallows tracking, disallows the unwanted contact of unknown adults, disallows the sharing/sale of the data of minors, and has a private right of action.