Vermont residents will have a legal right to mental and neural data privacy from 1 July 2026. Governor Phil Scott signed H.814 (“An act relating to neurological rights and the use of artificial intelligence technology in health and human services”) into law on 18 May 2026, making Vermont the fifth US state with neural data legislation on the books after Colorado, California, Montana, and Connecticut. The enacted text is the 6-page version of a bill that originally cleared the House at 32 pages. Senate amendments stripped the consent requirement and the private right of action before the House concurred and sent the bill to the Governor’s desk.

What the enacted law actually does

H.814’s surviving provisions recognise a set of individual rights: mental and neural data privacy, freedom of thought, non-discrimination in the development and application of neurotechnologies, and protection from neurotechnological interventions of the mind. The act also commissions a study by Vermont’s state agencies on the use of artificial intelligence in health and human services delivery. The combination is closer to a statement of principle plus a discovery exercise than to an enforceable regulatory regime.

Two original provisions were stripped during the Senate amendment process. The first was a consent requirement before any entity could collect or process neural data from a Vermont resident. The second was a private right of action that would have allowed individuals to sue companies directly over violations rather than rely solely on state enforcement. Both were removed, and the bill returned to the House in its 6-page form for concurrence before reaching Governor Scott.

How Vermont fits in the state-patchwork map

Vermont is now the fifth US state with a neural data statute, joining the patchwork that Inside BCI mapped on 3 April. The other four are structurally different from each other and from Vermont. Colorado, California, and Connecticut amended existing consumer privacy statutes to include neural data within “sensitive personal information.” Montana wrote a standalone neural data privacy law with consent, access, deletion, and destruction obligations. Vermont’s signed version is closer to Connecticut’s amendment in scope but lighter on enforcement; it most resembles a legislative on-ramp rather than a binding regulatory regime.

The Connecticut amendment and Vermont’s H.814 share an effective date of 1 July 2026. On the same day, two US states will operationalise different versions of neural data protection, with neither providing the consent-based architecture that the Neurorights Foundation has been advocating for. The foundation, founded by neuroscientist Rafael Yuste, has been working in nine additional US states to pass similar legislation. Per Yuste’s public statement on H.814, Vermont becomes the ninth territory in the world with neural data legislation when its July effective date arrives.

The federal context

The state-level activity continues against an effectively unmoved federal backdrop. The MIND Act introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer with Senators Maria Cantwell and Ed Markey in September 2025 directs the Federal Trade Commission to study how neural data should be regulated; it has not advanced through committee. The legal scholar most cited in the neural data privacy debate, Nita Farahany of Duke, has argued publicly that neural data should be treated as a distinct privacy category with bespoke rules rather than absorbed into existing privacy frameworks. Vermont’s signed version takes the absorptive approach.

Inside BCI’s 8 May coverage of CMS WISeR and the 7 May EU AI Act medical device omnibus delay both established that 2026 is shaping into a year of regulatory uncertainty for the neurotechnology category at the federal and supra-national levels. State-level activity is moving in the opposite direction, with successive statutes adding to the patchwork even as federal coordination remains absent.

What to watch

The first watch item is which of the in-committee states moves next. Massachusetts, Minnesota, Illinois, and New York are the four states currently tracked by the Neurorights Foundation as advancing legislation through 2026. Minnesota’s broader “neurodata rights” framework remains the most ambitious of the pending bills. The second watch item is the H.814 study itself. The substantive forward hook in Vermont’s version is what the commissioned study finds and recommends to the next legislative session. If the study returns with a recommendation for the consent rule and private right of action that were stripped from H.814, Vermont could move from on-ramp to enforceable regime within the next two years.

Sources

• Action Taken by Governor Phil Scott on Legislation, May 18, 2026 (Office of Governor Phil Scott)
• Vermont Governor Signs Bill Seeking Neural Privacy Report (Privacy Daily, 19 May 2026)
• Bill Status H.814 (Vermont Legislature)
• H.814 As Passed by the House, 6-page version (Vermont Legislature)
• Inside BCI: Vermont H.814 clears Senate, neural rights bill awaits Governor (7 May 2026)