Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
A Supreme Court ruling upholding online age verification is prompting calls on Congress to pass a federal standard.
Why it matters: The SCOTUS decision is giving momentum to one idea for how to protect kids online, a broader effort on the Hill that's bipartisan but often gets stuck amid policy disagreements.
Driving the news: A Texas law that requires age verification for websites where more than a third of the content is sexually explicit does not violate free speech, SCOTUS ruled last month.
- The court had previously struck down such efforts because they were overly restrictive.
- Sen. Mike Lee's SCREEN Act, which would require all porn sites to verify age, mostly resembles that Texas law that passed muster in the Supreme Court.
Lee is also sponsoring the App Store Accountability Act with Rep. John James. Both lawmakers said SCOTUS' vindication of age verification should propel Congress to act.
- "The Supreme Court made the right call: kids cannot consent and any company that exposes them to adult or addictive material should be held accountable," James said.
The other side: Tech companies have sought to shift the burden of age verification.
- Apple and Google, the two main app store players, have been opposed to putting age verification at the app store level, while Meta has pushed hard for it.
- Apple has publicly endorsed other kids' online safety bills, including KOSA.
The big picture: More than 20 states have passed age verification laws and, following the SCOTUS ruling, they're now gearing up to enforce them.
- The idea is picking up steam abroad, too, with the EU now working on age verification policy.
What they're saying: Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's Alex Ambrose warned against a patchwork of state laws that — like AI or privacy — set varying standards.
- "Congress is best positioned to settle this issue — not states. Congress should preempt the growing patchwork and establish a national child flag system that balances children's safety and adults' access to legal content," Ambrose said.
- Center for Democracy and Technology's Kate Ruane: "If any government entity pursues these burdensome policies, at the very least they must limit them only to content that is obscene as to minors and include important protections for privacy and data security."
- "A better solution would be a voluntary system that enables developers, who are interested in building and marketing products and services for children, to request an age verification flag from an app store, and then proceeding accordingly in compliance with legal requirements," ACT | The App Association's Graham Dufault said.
The intrigue: The Supreme Court's endorsement of age verification is a rare signal to Congress that these kinds of laws could work and withstand legal scrutiny.
- Often, key arguments against tech laws rely on the idea that companies would be constantly sued due to overly broad policy.
- In contrast, past Supreme Court tech rulings have been more neutral or positive in how they treat laws tech sees as important, like Section 230, which justices left intact when given the chance to weaken it.
