A judge has ordered the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to stop providing details on customers’ electricity usage to law enforcement agencies unless a specific criminal investigation is underway.
The ruling, issued Thursday by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang, stemmed from a 2022 lawsuit alleging that the community-owned utility shared electricity usage data across large areas of the city and county, leading to false assumptions about customers’ activites and violated state privacy protections.
While Chang found SMUD violated rules limiting how public utilities may share customer data, she ruled the actions did not violate state or federal constitutional protections nor did it constitute racial profiling, as argued by privacy advocates and a civil rights group…