Pillar 02 · Trust
Data & Privacy
Wisconsin has no comprehensive consumer data privacy law. The votes for one are demonstrably there. What is missing is a business position the businesses agree on.
Where this stands
Recommended 10–0. Died on the calendar.
AB 172 would have given Wisconsin a comprehensive consumer data privacy law. The Assembly Committee on State Affairs recommended it for passage on a unanimous 10–0 vote in January 2026, and it died on the Rules calendar when the session closed. Its predecessor passed the Assembly outright in 2024.
So this is not a persuasion problem. A bill that clears committee without a dissenting vote and passes a chamber in a prior session has already won the argument on principle. It fails on the details, and the details are the part business is supposed to supply.
The gap
Two registrations in favor. Eighteen abstentions.
On the record for AB 172, the principals registered in support numbered two: Microsoft and the Wisconsin Technology Council. Eighteen major principals registered as “Other” — present, paying attention, taking no position.
That is the whole opportunity. When the businesses subject to a law will not say what they want from it, the law gets written by whoever will — or it does not get written at all, which is the outcome Wisconsin has now. A privacy statute drafted without operators in the room is the one most likely to be unworkable for them.
Our position
Build the position that does not exist yet.
Wisconsin should have a comprehensive privacy law, and it should be one small and mid-sized Wisconsin companies can actually comply with: clear thresholds so it does not land on businesses without a data practice, obligations that map to what a firm already does for payment and health data, and a single state standard rather than a patchwork assembled from other states’ definitions.
Our work here is convening before drafting — getting the eighteen abstentions into a room and finding out what they actually disagree about.
Bill numbers, votes and committee composition are drawn from the Wisconsin Legislature and Legislative Council records; lobbying registrations from Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings. See the legislative tracker for live bill status, or the full agenda for how this fits the two pillars.