S. 4946 · 119th Congress
Health and Location Data Protection Act of 2026
Sen. Warren, Elizabeth [D-MA] (D-MA) · Introduced · 4 cosponsors
Latest action
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
· from Congress.gov, as of August 8, 2026
Committees
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Why this matters
Committees do the detailed work — they decide if a bill should move forward and shape its content. Most bills die here.
What can happen next
If approved, the committee reports the bill to the full chamber for debate and a vote.
Study this bill
AP GovThe constitutional question
The Constitution's civil-liberties guarantees run against the government — the state-action doctrine — so when private data brokers sell location traces revealing visits to clinics, churches, or addiction meetings, no amendment applies; and under the third-party doctrine, even police can often buy what they could not subpoena. Senator Warren's bill (introduced July 13, 2026, three cosponsors, in Commerce) would ban brokers from selling health and location data outright, making Congress, not the courts, the source of the protection.
The strongest case for
After Dobbs, the abstraction became concrete: location data sold openly on the commercial market can reconstruct who visited a reproductive-health clinic, when, and from where — and the FTC's enforcement actions against location brokers document exactly this trade. Carpenter v. United States made police get a warrant for cell-site history, but nothing stops an agency, employer, stalker, or foreign intelligence service from simply purchasing the same trail; a warrant requirement the market can route around is not a protection. Health and location data are uniquely non-consensual — no one meaningfully agrees to a hidden SDK in a weather app — and uniquely dangerous, which is why a flat ban on sale, not another consent checkbox, is the honest remedy.
The strongest case against
A flat ban on 'health and location' data sales sweeps in the anonymized and aggregated flows behind traffic apps, epidemiology, disaster response, and the ad-supported model that keeps most of the internet free — definitions this broad regulate infrastructure, not villains. The genuinely abusive practices are already reachable: the FTC has brought and won cases against location brokers under existing unfairness authority, and states from Washington to Texas have enacted targeted health-data laws, the federalism laboratory working as designed. A three-cosponsor bill introduced in a midterm July is a message, not a statute — and comprehensive privacy legislation (ADPPA) with real bipartisan work behind it stalled precisely because sweeping preemption and private-right questions this bill ignores are hard.
Foundational documents in play
- U.S. Constitution
The Fourth Amendment restrains government searches — but data brokers are private actors, so the liberty at stake here has no constitutional text protecting it, only statute.
Required cases in play
- Roe v. Wade (1973)
Roe's privacy line — and its overruling — is why location data near clinics became the sharpest privacy fight in America; the CED still requires Roe, and this bill is its data-age sequel.
Organizations supporting
Organizations opposing
This has happened before
Warren introduced the same-named bill in June 2022, days before Dobbs; it died in committee. The comprehensive alternative, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, cleared House committee 53–2 that summer — the closest Congress has ever come to a general privacy law — then collapsed over state-preemption and enforcement fights. American privacy law advances only in sectors (HIPAA, COPPA, FCRA); this bill bets that health-plus-location is the next sector with a coalition, and its cosponsor count says the bet hasn't paid yet.
Practice FRQ
Concept Application. "A Senate bill would prohibit data brokers from selling individuals' health and location data. Supporters argue constitutional privacy protections do not reach private companies; opponents argue existing agency enforcement and state laws suffice." (A) Describe the state-action doctrine and its consequence for civil liberties claims against private companies. (B) Explain how the overruling of Roe v. Wade changed the stakes of commercial location data. (C) Explain one advantage and one disadvantage of addressing this by federal statute rather than state law.
Sources: www.congress.gov · www.warren.senate.gov
Action history
Every recorded action from Congress.gov — 2 total.
Senate
Introduced in Senate
Senate
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.