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Does Nebraska give businesses a chance to cure a privacy violation?

Yes. Neb. Rev. Stat. Section 87-1122 requires the Attorney General to give written notice at least 30 days before bringing an action, and bars that action if the controller cures and provides the required written statements. Only then does the $7,500 penalty in Section 87-1124 apply.

Applies to: Controllers and processors subject to the Nebraska Data Privacy Act that receive a notice of alleged violation from the Nebraska Attorney General, who enforces the Act.

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Nebraska's enforcement model puts a warning in front of the lawsuit. The Attorney General has to write to you first, name what is allegedly broken, and wait 30 days. If you fix it and say so properly, the action cannot be brought.

What Section 87-1122 requires

Before bringing an action under Section 87-1124, the Attorney General shall notify a controller or processor in writing, not later than the thirtieth day before bringing the action, identifying the specific provisions of the Data Privacy Act the Attorney General alleges have been or are being violated.

The obligation to identify specific provisions is worth noticing. It converts a vague enforcement threat into a defined scope of work, and it tells you what "cured" has to mean.

The two conditions that block the action

The Attorney General may not bring an action if, first, within the thirty-day period the controller or processor cures the identified violation; and second, the controller or processor provides the Attorney General:

A written statement that the controller or processor cured the alleged violation, together with supportive documentation to show how such violation was cured. And an express written statement that the controller or processor shall not commit any such violation after the alleged violation has been cured.

Nebraska's list is shorter than the four-element version Texas uses, but the second element does something the first does not. It asks for a forward-looking promise, and that promise becomes enforceable in its own right.

The penalty, and the two ways to reach it

Section 87-1124(1): a person who violates the Data Privacy Act following the cure period described by Section 87-1122, or who breaches a written statement provided to the Attorney General under that section, is liable for a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed seven thousand five hundred dollars for each violation.

So the $7,500 is not a penalty for the original violation. It attaches to what happens after the notice: failing to cure inside the window, or curing and then breaking the express written commitment. Businesses tend to focus all their attention on the first door and forget the second one stays open indefinitely.

Under Section 87-1124(2) the Attorney General may bring an action in the name of the State of Nebraska to recover the penalty, to restrain or enjoin the conduct, or both. Section 87-1124(3) allows recovery of reasonable attorney's fees and other reasonable expenses incurred in investigating and bringing the action, which is the part that makes the real exposure larger than the per-violation figure suggests. Section 87-1124(4) sends collected money to the State Treasurer for distribution under Article VII, Section 5 of the Nebraska Constitution.

"Each violation" is the number that matters

A $7,500 ceiling reads as modest until you ask what counts as one violation. The Act does not define a violation as one enforcement matter, and a defect in a standing process, an opt-out that is not honored, a notice that is missing a required element, tends to repeat across every affected consumer. Model your exposure on the population, not on the incident.

Before any of this: are you even covered?

Section 87-1103 limits the Act to a person that conducts business in Nebraska or produces a product or service consumed by residents, processes or engages in the sale of personal data, and is not a small business under the federal Small Business Act as it existed on January 1, 2024. It then exempts state agencies, financial institutions and Gramm-Leach-Bliley data, HIPAA covered entities and business associates, nonprofits, institutions of higher education, and certain electric and natural gas utilities.

Answering that question first is cheaper than answering a notice.

Next step

The free 2-minute Obligation Scan checks your business against every US state privacy law and GDPR at once and tells you which ones reach you before an Attorney General does. For the applicability and exemption analysis, see Nebraska Data Privacy Act exemptions and the Nebraska Data Privacy Act overview; for the near-identical mechanism next door, see the Texas cure period.

Compliance checklist

  • Treat a Section 87-1122 notice as a hard 30-day deadline, because the Attorney General may bring the action once that window closes.
  • Work from the specific provisions named in the notice, which Section 87-1122 requires the Attorney General to identify.
  • Cure the violation and send the written statement; Section 87-1122 requires both before the bar on an action applies.
  • Attach supportive documentation showing how the violation was cured, which the statute names as part of the written statement rather than as an optional extra.
  • Include the express written statement that you will not commit any such violation after the cure, and then hold to it, since breaching it is an independent route to liability under Section 87-1124(1).
  • Route legal notices to a named owner with a 48-hour internal deadline, because 30 days is short once the notice has sat unopened.

Sources

Last verified: 2026-08-28

Informational, not legal advice.