The House Commerce Committee plans to take “action” on comprehensive privacy legislation after considering kid bills this spring, a committee staffer said in a statement Friday.
A vast and confusing array of kids privacy laws in the states is likely to keep expanding in the near term, even though many are probably unconstitutional, Sheila Millar, a consumer protection lawyer at Keller & Heckman, said on a Better Business Bureau podcast posted Wednesday.
Despite some federal statutes and many state laws specific to privacy, the FTC acts as a stand-in for the lack of a comprehensive federal privacy measure, said the agency's former chief privacy officer at a Practising Law Institute (PLI) event Wednesday. Besides state privacy laws, enforcers often employ unfair and deceptive acts and practices (UDAP) statutes and other consumer protection laws, another panelist said.
FTC Commissioner Mark Meador sees Section 5 of the FTC Act and COPPA as the best statutory authorities for the commission to protect children online, the Republican told the Monopoly Report during a podcast aired Wednesday. But Section 6(b) of the FTC Act is a unique tool to better understand modern data practices, he said.
Questions remain about how companies can use new Apple and Google application programming interfaces (APIs) to comply with app store age-verification laws coming into effect soon in California, Louisiana, Texas and Utah, Frankfurt Kurnit privacy attorneys blogged Monday.
Roblox saw its legal troubles grow Tuesday as Iowa became the latest state to sue the gaming platform for failing to protect children from sexual exploitation and related harms. Also on Tuesday, the South Carolina attorney general said his state is investigating Roblox for deceiving parents about the platform's safety.
A federal court permanently blocked a Louisiana law that would require age verification before a user could access social media platforms Monday, ruling that it violated the First Amendment. The decision Monday was a win for NetChoice, which sued the state over the statute in March claiming free speech violations and privacy risks (see 2503180048).
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said Monday the state sued "approximately" 50 adult websites for flouting the state’s age-verification law.
The differences among app store age-verification laws in four states “may look small on paper, but they can create serious compliance traps for small developers trying to ship nationwide,” ACT | The App Association said Friday.
Some supported a Texas app store age-verification law, while others criticized its constitutionality and regulatory hurdles in amicus briefs filed last week at the U.S. District Court for Western Texas (case 1:25-cv-01660).