Privacy for every student.
Learning shouldn’t cost students their privacy. The software students are required to use can track how they read, what they write, and the most sensitive facts of their lives. AB 1159 modernizes California’s student privacy laws and extends them to the 2.9 million students in the state’s colleges and universities.
What AB 1159 does
Why California needs this now
A college student assigned a particular learning platform, or a testing service required for admission, cannot say no to its data practices without dropping the course. That is the problem at the center of this bill. When using a product is the price of an education, agreeing to whatever that product collects is not a real choice.
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse studied the courseware college students are required to buy and use. Our 2024 report Paying Twice to Learn found products that collect far more than coursework: a student’s location, how they move through the material, their quiz answers and discussion posts, whether they need financial aid, and audio and video recorded while they work. The Chronicle of Higher Education found a required general-education health course whose courseware asked students how many sexual partners they had. One major publisher discloses that it buys information about students from data brokers.
A record a company never needed to keep is a record that cannot be stolen, sold, or used against a student and their family.
The stakes rise as this data accumulates. Education is now one of the fastest-growing targets for data breaches. In 2026 a single breach of the Canvas learning platform exposed hundreds of millions of records across thousands of institutions, including California’s public universities.
California has met this kind of gap before. It protected K-12 students in 2014 and preschoolers in 2016, each time by placing clear duties on the EdTech companies rather than on schools or families. Every obligation in AB 1159 works the same way: it falls on the companies that handle student data, and it asks nothing of schools, teachers, parents, or students. The bill finishes the job California started, and it gives college students the same protection the state already gives a kindergartner.
The Student Online Personal Information Protection Act and the Early Learner Personal Information Protection Act were landmark pieces of legislation that created protections for student and early learner data. However, technological progress has outpaced the legal protections provided by these laws. Students in California’s institutions of higher education have no equivalent protections at all. AB 1159 modernizes existing data protections in the education field and extends those protections to students in higher education, ensuring that all students can learn safely and securely in an increasingly digital world.
Assemblymember Dawn Addis
Author, AB 1159 30th California Assembly District
Built with the people it protects
AB 1159 is supported by the educators, faculty, and school employees who see these tools every day, including the California Federation of Teachers, the California Faculty Association, and the California School Employees Association, alongside a broad coalition of civil rights, labor, and consumer organizations.
- Students and families: the platforms you are required to use take on real duties to protect you, and you gain a way to act when they break the law.
- Teachers and faculty: protection is written into the law, so it no longer depends on catching it in a vendor contract.
- Schools, districts, and colleges: a single statewide floor replaces the work of negotiating student data terms with vendor after vendor, one contract at a time.
Where AB 1159 Stands
Status: Active, moving through the Senate.
Location: Senate Committee on Appropriations.
Author: Assemblymember Dawn Addis (30th Assembly District).
Sponsor: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
Next: Senate floor vote, then the Governor’s desk. The Governor’s deadline to sign or veto is September 30, 2026.
Follow it live
Track every action, hearing, and amendment on California’s official legislative site.
The research behind the bill
Our 2024 report Paying Twice to Learn examined the courseware higher education students are required to buy and use, and found products collecting far more than coursework. AB 1159 grew directly out of that research and out of a decade of education-sector breach data.
Read our support letter
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is the proud sponsor of AB 1159. Our letter lays out the case in full: why the definitional loopholes matter, why student data should not train commercial AI, why the most sensitive categories deserve a bright line, and why college students deserve the same protection California already gives younger students.
Stay with this fight
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is a nonprofit that has advocated for meaningful privacy rights for more than thirty years. Schools, unions, parents, and student groups who want to support AB 1159 can get in touch, and anyone can follow the work.