NetChoice Seeks Veto of 5 California Bills
NetChoice urged California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to veto several bills as the tech trade group hopes it can convince state legislators to “relent in their seemingly inexhaustible desire to police speech and regulate sources of expression.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Privacy Daily provides accurate coverage of newsworthy developments in data protection legislation, regulation, litigation, and enforcement for privacy professionals responsible for ensuring effective organizational data privacy compliance.
In a Monday letter, the tech association asked the governor to veto bills on social media warning labels (AB-56), age-verification signals (AB-1043), social-media hate crimes (SB-771), kids’ usage of AI chatbots (AB-1064) and employers' use of automated decision systems (SB-7). The bills passed the legislature earlier this month and Newsom has until Oct. 12 to sign them (see 2509150026 and 2509120037).
The goal of the age-verification measure is to better protect user privacy by not “requiring the age-specific dissemination of user information between an app store and the apps themselves,” noted NetChoice. “While that is a laudable effort, the reality is that in order to create a functional system of age signals, the granular user data must still be harvested and stored by app stores, creating a significant privacy risk that could be exploited by hackers, scammers, and sexual predators.”
Meanwhile, AB-1064 “has provisions that would make it ripe for First Amendment legal challenge,” said NetChoice, which frequently sues California and other states over laws it argues are unconstitutional.
In addition, SB-7 “is likely to cost California businesses between $524 million and $1 billion in annual compliance costs,” said the association, citing California Chamber of Commerce analysis from June 23. “Those small businesses brave enough to contend with SB 7 could see themselves quickly shuttered.”