Law note · Wisconsin
Wisconsin Data Privacy Act, AB 466 (2023-2024 Regular Session)
2023 Assembly Bill 466, as introduced, would have applied to a controller processing personal data of at least 100,000 consumers, or deriving over 50% of revenue from data sales while processing at least 25,000 consumers' data, the same threshold shape as several other Virginia-model states in this wave and identical in structure to West Virginia's dead HB 2987. Its own effective-date clause specified January 1, 2025, which never took hold since the bill did not become law.
As introduced, biometric data would have meant data from automatic measurements of biological characteristics used to identify a specific individual, but excluded a physical or digital photograph, a video or audio recording, or data generated from either, unconditionally, with no exception for data generated to identify someone; the bill was later amended (Assembly Amendment AA1-AB466) before passing the Assembly on 2023-11-14, and this document treats the quoted definitions as the introduced baseline rather than confirmed as-passed text.
The bill failed to concur in the Senate on 2024-04-15 and died with the close of the 2023-2024 biennium; its 2025-2026 successors, SB 166 and AB 172, both auto-failed on 2026-03-23 under Senate Joint Resolution 1 without a floor vote in either chamber and are not recorded as instruments.
The bill would have foreclosed a private right of action broadly, reaching violations of the bill itself 'or under any other law,' the same broad foreclosure language West Virginia's dead HB 2987 uses, after a 30-day Attorney General cure period, with civil forfeiture up to $7,500 per violation available to the Attorney General alone.
What it asks of an app
- This bill never became law. It died without Senate concurrence in 2024, and its 2025-2026 successors failed without a floor vote; do not treat any of them as binding.
- If a similar bill returns in a future Wisconsin session, note that AB 466's biometric data definition, as introduced, excluded a photograph, video, or audio recording, or data generated from either, unconditionally, unlike the enacted breach statute below, which carries no such exclusion at all.
When LexLint raises it
Declared activities: automated_outreach, crawls_web, deploys_chatbot, processes_biometrics, processes_voice, trains_models
Primary source: official Wisconsin bill text, 2023 Assembly Bill 466, as introduced, Wisconsin State Legislature website