Bill Text: CA AB161 | 2019-2020 | Regular Session | Amended


Bill Title: Solid waste: paper waste: proofs of purchase.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 5-0)

Status: (Engrossed - Dead) 2019-08-30 - In committee: Held under submission. [AB161 Detail]

Download: California-2019-AB161-Amended.html

Amended  IN  Senate  June 27, 2019
Amended  IN  Assembly  May 17, 2019
Amended  IN  Assembly  May 07, 2019
Amended  IN  Assembly  April 30, 2019
Amended  IN  Assembly  April 02, 2019
Amended  IN  Assembly  March 19, 2019

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2019–2020 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill No. 161


Introduced by Assembly Member Ting
(Principal coauthor: Senator Stern)
(Coauthors: Assembly Members Chiu and Mark Stone)
(Coauthor: Senator Wiener)

January 07, 2019


An act to amend Section 1747.08 of the Civil Code, and to add Chapter 5.8 (commencing with Section 42359) to Part 3 of Division 30 of the Public Resources Code, relating to solid waste.


LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


AB 161, as amended, Ting. Solid waste: paper waste: electronic proofs of purchase.
Existing law prohibits certain stores from providing a single-use carryout bag to a customer at the point of sale and prohibits full-service restaurants from providing single-use plastic straws to consumers unless requested by the consumer.
This bill, on and after January 1, 2022, bill would require a business, defined as a company business, as defined, that accepts payment through credit cash, credit, or debit transactions, subject to certain exceptions, to provide a proof of purchase to a consumer only at the consumer’s option and would prohibit a business from printing a paper proof of purchase if the consumer opts to not receive a proof of purchase, unless otherwise required by state or federal law. The bill, on and after January 1, 2024, if a consumer opts to receive a proof of purchase, would require the proof of purchase to be provided in electronic form or paper form, at the consumer’s option, unless a prescribed form is otherwise required by state or federal law. The bill would prohibit a paper proof of purchase provided to a consumer by a business from containing bisphenol A or bisphenol S, and from including items not essential to the transaction, including, but not limited to, coupons or advertisements. The bill would specify that the first and 2nd violations of any of those provisions would result in a notice of violation and any subsequent violation would be punishable by a civil penalty of $25 for each day the business is in violation, but not to exceed an annual total of $300. The bill would authorize the Attorney General, a district attorney, or a city attorney to enforce those provisions. The bill would make these provisions operative on January 1, 2022.

Existing law prohibits a person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation that accepts credit cards for the transaction of business from requesting or requiring the cardholder to provide personal identification information, which is then recorded, as a condition to accepting the credit card as payment in full or in part for goods or services, subject to specified exceptions.

This bill would exempt from that requirement a person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation that is a business, as would be defined pursuant to the above provisions, is requesting personal identification information that is necessary to provide the cardholder with a receipt in electronic form pursuant to the above provisions, and does not use the personal identification information for marketing purposes.

Vote: MAJORITY   Appropriation: NO   Fiscal Committee: YES   Local Program: NO  

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:


SECTION 1.

 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) The report titled “Skip the Slip: Environmental Costs & Human Health Risks of Paper Receipts with Proposed Solutions” from Green America found that more than 3,000,000 trees and 9,000,000,000 gallons of water in America are used to create proof of purchase receipts.
(b) Receipts generate 302,000,000 pounds of waste and 4,000,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of more than 425,000 cars on the road, and most paper receipts contain chemicals that would contaminate other recyclable paper materials.
(c) The Ecology Center found that 93 percent of paper receipts are coated with bisphenol A (BPA) or bisphenol S (BPS) chemicals. The United States Food and Drug Administration has banned BPA from baby bottles because those chemicals are known to disrupt hormones, causing cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental issues.
(d) The BPA or BPS on receipts can enter people’s bodies simply through touch, which poses a major risk to retail workers, who have 30 percent more BPA or BPS found in their bodies than others who do not have regular contact with receipts, according to the Environmental Working Group and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(e) The State of Connecticut banned the use of receipt paper containing BPA in 2011, and the European Union will restrict the use of BPA in thermal paper beginning in 2020 and is also investigating similar restrictions on the use of BPS.

(f)Data from a company that provides mobile payment services shows that their sellers send over 10,000,000 digital receipts each month.

(g)

(f) Prohibiting businesses from providing paper receipts except upon request would have significant positive environmental and public health effects.
SEC. 2.Section 1747.08 of the Civil Code is amended to read:
1747.08.

(a)Except as provided in subdivision (c), a person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation that accepts credit cards for the transaction of business shall not do any of the following:

(1)Request, or require as a condition to accepting the credit card as payment in full or in part for goods or services, the cardholder to write any personal identification information upon the credit card transaction form or otherwise.

(2)Request, or require as a condition to accepting the credit card as payment in full or in part for goods or services, the cardholder to provide personal identification information that the person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation accepting the credit card writes, causes to be written, or otherwise records upon the credit card transaction form or otherwise.

(3)Utilize, in any credit card transaction, a credit card form that contains preprinted spaces specifically designated for filling in any personal identification information of the cardholder.

(b)For purposes of this section “personal identification information,” means information concerning the cardholder, other than information set forth on the credit card, and including, but not limited to, the cardholder’s address and telephone number.

(c)Subdivision (a) does not apply in the following instances:

(1)If the credit card is being used as a deposit to secure payment in the event of default, loss, damage, or other similar occurrence.

(2)Cash advance transactions.

(3)If any of the following applies:

(A)The person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation accepting the credit card is contractually obligated to provide personal identification information in order to complete the credit card transaction.

(B)The person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation accepting the credit card in a sales transaction at a retail motor fuel dispenser or retail motor fuel payment island automated cashier uses the ZIP Code information solely for prevention of fraud, theft, or identity theft.

(C)The person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation accepting the credit card is obligated to collect and record the personal identification information by federal or state law or regulation.

(D)The person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation is a business, as defined in Section 42359 of the Public Resources Code, is requesting personal identification information that is necessary to provide the cardholder with a receipt in electronic form pursuant to Section 42359.1 of the Public Resources Code, and does not use the personal identification information for marketing purposes.

(4)If personal identification information is required for a special purpose incidental but related to the individual credit card transaction, including, but not limited to, information relating to shipping, delivery, servicing, or installation of the purchased merchandise, or for special orders.

(d)This section does not prohibit any person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation from requiring the cardholder, as a condition to accepting the credit card as payment in full or in part for goods or services, to provide reasonable forms of positive identification, which may include a driver’s license or a California state identification card, or where one of these is not available, another form of photo identification, provided that none of the information contained thereon is written or recorded on the credit card transaction form or otherwise. If the cardholder pays for the transaction with a credit card number and does not make the credit card available upon request to verify the number, the cardholder’s driver’s license number or identification card number may be recorded on the credit card transaction form or otherwise.

(e)Any person who violates this section shall be subject to a civil penalty not to exceed two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for the first violation and one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each subsequent violation, to be assessed and collected in a civil action brought by the person paying with a credit card, by the Attorney General, or by the district attorney or city attorney of the county or city in which the violation occurred. However, a civil penalty shall not be assessed for a violation of this section if the defendant shows by a preponderance of the evidence that the violation was not intentional and resulted from a bona fide error made notwithstanding the defendant’s maintenance of procedures reasonably adopted to avoid that error. When collected, the civil penalty shall be payable, as appropriate, to the person paying with a credit card who brought the action, or to the general fund of whichever governmental entity brought the action to assess the civil penalty.

(f)The Attorney General, or any district attorney or city attorney with jurisdiction, may bring an action in the superior court in the name of the people of the State of California to enjoin violation of subdivision (a) and, upon notice to the defendant of not less than five days, to temporarily restrain and enjoin the violation. If it appears to the satisfaction of the court that the defendant has, in fact, violated subdivision (a), the court may issue an injunction restraining further violations, without requiring proof that any person has been damaged by the violation. In these proceedings, if the court finds that the defendant has violated subdivision (a), the court may direct the defendant to pay any or all costs incurred by the Attorney General, district attorney, or city attorney in seeking or obtaining injunctive relief pursuant to this subdivision.

(g)Actions for collection of civil penalties under subdivision (e) and for injunctive relief under subdivision (f) may be consolidated.

(h)The changes made to this section by Chapter 458 of the Statutes of 1995 apply only to credit card transactions entered into on and after January 1, 1996. Nothing in those changes shall be construed to affect any civil action which was filed before January 1, 1996.

SEC. 3.SEC. 2.

 Chapter 5.8 (commencing with Section 42359) is added to Part 3 of Division 30 of the Public Resources Code, to read:
CHAPTER  5.8. Proof of Purchase

42359.
 For purposes of this chapter, the following definitions apply:
(a) (1) “Business” means a company person that accepts payment through credit cash, credit, or debit transactions.
(2) “Business” does not include any of the following:

(A)A business that provides proofs of purchase that meet the following requirements:

(i)The proof of purchase does not contain bisphenol A or bisphenol S.

(ii)The proof of purchase does not include printouts of items nonessential to the transaction, including, but not limited to, coupons or advertisements.

(B)

(A) A health care provider, as defined in Section 123105 of the Health and Safety Code.

(C)

(B) A small business, as defined in Section 11342.610 of the Government Code.
(C) An entity organized as a nonprofit institution that has annual gross sale receipts of less than two million dollars ($2,000,000).
(b) “Consumer” means a person who purchases, and does not offer for resale, food, alcohol, other tangible personal property, or services.

(c)“Electronic form” includes, but is not limited to, a form sent through email or text message.

(d)

(c) “Invoice” means an itemized list of goods or services provided before or after the point of sale through a contract stating the amount due.
(d) “Person” includes any individual, firm, association, organization, partnership, limited liability company, business trust, corporation, or company.
(e) “Proof of purchase” means a receipt for the retail sale of food, alcohol, or other tangible personal property, or for the provision of services, provided at the point of sale, but does not include an invoice.

42359.1.
 (a) On and after January 1, 2022, a A proof of purchase shall be provided to a consumer by a business only at the consumer’s option, unless a proof of purchase is otherwise required to be given to the consumer by state or federal law.
(b) On and after January 1, 2022, a A paper proof of purchase shall not be printed by a business if the consumer opts to not receive a proof of purchase, unless otherwise required by state or federal law.

(c)(1)On and after January 1, 2024, if a consumer opts to receive a proof of purchase pursuant to subdivision (a), the proof of purchase shall be provided in electronic form or paper form, at the consumer’s option, unless a prescribed form is otherwise required by state or federal law.

(2)Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a business is not required to provide an electronic proof of purchase if, due to limited internet connectivity, a power outage, or other unexpected technical difficulties, the business is incapable of sending an electronic proof of purchase.

(c) A paper proof of purchase provided to a consumer by a business shall not contain bisphenol A or bisphenol S.
(d) (1) A paper proof of purchase provided to a consumer by a business shall not include printouts of items nonessential to the transaction if those nonessential items make the paper proof of purchase longer than necessary to provide the consumer with the essential items to the transaction.
(2) “Items nonessential to the transaction” include, but are not limited to, coupons or advertisements.

(d)

(e) The Attorney General, a district attorney, or a city attorney may enforce this section. The first and second violations of subdivision (a), (b), or (c) this section shall result in a notice of violation, and any subsequent violation shall be punishable by a civil penalty of twenty-five dollars ($25) for each day the business is in violation, but not to exceed three hundred dollars ($300) annually.

(e)(1)Nothing in this section shall be construed to alter a consumer privacy protection required pursuant to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (Title 1.81.5 (commencing with Section 1798.100) to Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code).

(2)Nothing in this section is intended to alter the consumer rights of individuals.

(f) This section shall become operative on January 1, 2022.

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