South Carolina senators are undaunted by potential lawsuits against a proposed state law requiring social media companies to adopt an age-appropriate design code (AADC), said Senate Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee members at a livestreamed hearing Monday. The panel voted unanimously by voice to send the identical S-268 and H-3431 to the Senate floor. The House passed an earlier version of H-3431 in February (see 2502200059).
The FTC on Monday announced that it's finalizing new rules under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), with minor changes from what the Biden administration approved in January (see 2501160068).
The FTC is finalizing its Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule with changes from the prior administration’s proposal, the agency said in a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication Tuesday.
Trade association NetChoice asked the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee on Thursday to follow the lead of the decision in NetChoice v. Yost and order a preliminary injunction on a law that requires age verification before a person can access social media. The Yost case, decided Wednesday, enjoined an Ohio law requiring age verification on First Amendment grounds (see 2504160049).
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday vacated a preliminary injunction against Mississippi’s age-verification law and remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for Southern Mississippi, citing the recent ruling in Moody v. NetChoice, LLC that “reframed the analysis for facial challenges.” The 5th Circuit said that the district court in the Mississippi case “should have undertaken more detailed factual analysis” before finding that trade association NetChoice was likely to succeed on its merits.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) said the decision in the recent NetChoice, LLC v. Griffin case does not apply to her state's current case against the trade association about a kids online safety law, in a letter to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday. Earlier this month, trade association NetChoice suggested the 5th Circuit follow the ruling in Griffin and enjoin the Mississippi law, which is at the heart of NetChoice v. Fitch.
The Oklahoma Senate Technology and Telecommunications Committee cleared a pair of social media bills Thursday, despite their sponsors admitting the legislation needs work before coming to the floor. One bill addresses cyberbullying while the other is about age-verification, which many states have addressed this year (see 2501170053).
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced Thursday he is filing a lawsuit against messaging platform Discord for deceptive and unlawful business practices that led to children on the platform being exposed to violent and sexual content as well as child predators.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) issued a subpoena to Roblox Wednesday for information about how the online game markets to children, moderates chat rooms and sets age-verification requirements, as well as how it collects and processes data of child users.
Lawmakers in the state legislature approved the bipartisan Arkansas Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act Tuesday and the measure now heads to the governor's desk for signature. HB-1717 is modeled after the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 2.0 (see 2503040037), and would ban tech companies from collecting, retaining and disclosing minors' data, except in a few situations.