A press release issued by the CA AG office earlier this week announced that Gov Gavin Newsom signed SB 2863 into law on September 23.  We provided a full write up on this bill in our August 27 blog post, but one late change to the bill not covered in that post was the removal of a proposed requirement that a seller obtain a consumer's consent to the automatic renewal or continuous service "separately from any other portion of the contract."  This language did not make it in the final version of the bill (phew!) and was instead replaced with the addition of "express" in Section 17602(a)(4): "obtain the consumer's express affirmative consent...to the offer tems."  Unclear exactly what is meant by "express affirmative consent" as that term is not defined in the law, but the removal of "separate" is huge, like really huge.  Big props to the industry folks who worked with Rep Schiavo's office to get this change through.  This amendment becomes effective July 1, 2025 and will apply to contracts entered into, amended, or extended on or after that date.

 

As for the status of the FTC's Negative Option Rule rulemaking...[insert cricket emoji here].  Starting to feel like the Maytag repairman.