Comment by North Carolina Department of Justice

A federal bill marketed as children’s online safety legislation would tell tech companies they have no legal duty to protect kids, drop any requirement to verify users’ ages, and override the stronger state laws already on the books. Attorney General Jeff Jackson and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general are telling Congress not to pass it. The KIDS Act would preempt state laws addressing online harms to children, covering social media, obscenity, online gaming platforms, and AI chatbots. The bill appears to let state attorneys general enforce its terms, but it reserves federal preemption and intervention in every one of those cases. The state role is on paper only.