Law / United States / 
Montana
Montana Consumer Data Privacy Act (MCDPA), publicly available information exemption
Mont. Code Ann. § 30-14-2802(26)
In force since .
A personal data rule binding private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Personal data that is lawfully made available through a government record or widely distributed media, or that a controller reasonably believes a consumer lawfully made public, falls outside the MCDPA's definition of personal data.
- Check the Act's current, lower thresholds (25,000 consumers, or 15,000 with more than 25% of revenue from data sales) as amended by SB 297 in 2025; the original 2023 thresholds were roughly double these and no longer apply.
- Cite this Act's origin as Senate Bill 384 (2023), Chapter 681, never House Bill 351, which is an unrelated, unenacted marijuana bill.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does information on a web page open to every visitor count as information "lawfully made available through" "widely distributed media" under Mont. Code Ann. section 30-14-2802(26)(a)?
- What gives a controller "a reasonable basis to believe" that a consumer "lawfully made available to the public" the consumer's information, under Mont. Code Ann. section 30-14-2802(26)(b)?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
The row cites subsection (26) of the definitions section, which defines publicly available information and sets no duty to create, keep, produce or review a record. Subsection (26) states no territorial clause; the definition of consumer as a resident of this state sits in subsection (7), which the row does not cite. The controller duties elsewhere in the Act, including any assessment duty, belong to sections the row does not cite.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Section 30-14-2802(19)(b) excludes de-identified data and publicly available information from personal data, and subsection (26) defines publicly available information as information that is lawfully made available through federal, state, or municipal government records or widely distributed media, or that a controller has a reasonable basis to believe a consumer has lawfully made available to the public. The definition carries no exception for biometric data.
The Act was enacted as Senate Bill 384 (2023 Regular Session), Chapter 681, Laws of 2023, and section 30-14-2802 was amended by Chapter 567, Laws of 2025 (Senate Bill 297). The Act does not apply to any body, authority, board, bureau, commission, district or agency of this state or of any political subdivision of this state.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web, trains models or processes biometric data.
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