A House committee has revamped its version of kids online safety legislation for at least the third time, losing bipartisan support in the process and likely impairing its ability to pass the House.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the latest version of the legislation, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, on a 28-24 party-line vote Thursday.
“The absence of a bipartisan consensus cannot be an excuse for inaction,” the panel’s chairman, Kentucky GOP Rep. Brett Guthrie, said. “We hoped to do this with our Democratic colleagues, but if we cannot do it together, we still must move forward.”
Mr. Guthrie likely will not be able to get a floor vote without Democratic support because Republicans’ majority is so small they can only afford one defection on party-line votes.
While GOP support on the committee was unanimous, the online safety bill still faces some resistance in other pockets of the conference.
Democrats said they still want to achieve a bipartisan solution but can’t agree to a product that falls short of its stated goal to protect kids in the digital age.
“I really believe that these bills would leave our kids less safe online than they are today,” said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the panel’s top Democrat, accusing Republicans of “handing Big Tech a giant gift.”
The KIDS Act packages a dozen bills designed to protect kids from online harms, including the measure that has been the centerpiece of the years-long legislative effort, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
The measure requires social media companies to set minors’ settings to the maximum safety and privacy standards by default, add safeguards against obscene and restrictive products and alter design features that drive compulsive usage.
Rep. Gus Bilirakis, Florida Republican and lead sponsor of KOSA, said the update is “the most comprehensive kids online safety package this committee has ever advanced.”
“This is the culmination of years of hearings, evidence gathering, heartfelt testimony and the social media questioning this committee led,” he said.
Democrats countered that the new package moves further away from the bipartisan product the committee started with in 2024.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, New York Democrat, said Republicans have assembled “a partisan Frankenstein package made of their bad ideas falsely labeled as kids’ internet safety.”
“Some of the bills before this committee today are ripe with contradictions, vague enforcement mechanisms and directly undermined state authority,” she said.
KOSA started as a bipartisan product in both chambers of Congress. The original version passed the Senate in a 91-3 vote in 2024, but the House has yet to pass anything.
House Republicans have altered the bill at least three times over the last two years to make it more palatable to their conference and to fortify it against likely legal challenges.
Democrats have opposed each rewrite because Republicans dropped a “duty of care” provision that they say is the key to ensuring social media companies will make the changes the legislation aims to achieve.
The duty of care, which has remained in the Senate version of KOSA through a rewrite after the 2024 vote, requires social media companies to implement design standards to protect minors from specific harms and authorize the Federal Trade Commission to bring enforcement actions against companies that fail to do so.
“This bill has not only eliminated the duty of care standard included in previous versions, it actually bans any duty of care at the federal or state level,” said Rep. Kim Schrier, Washington Democrat. “How convenient, considering that the assumption of a duty of care is the basis of most of the lawsuits from parents whose children have died as a result of social media harms.”
The loss of the duty of care is compounded by a provision in the bill that says a social media company must have “actual knowledge” that a user is a minor to be held to account, Democrats say.
“It will be next to impossible for victims to prove actual knowledge in court,” said Rep. Darren Soto, a Florida Democrat who previously worked as attorney. “The victims would have to show that a company specifically knew that that algorithm or that practice causes harm, find the smoking gun, which rarely ever occurs.”
Democrats were also irate after Republicans offered a new version of KOSA in December that added preemption language to block states from enacting or enforcing any related laws.
Republicans adjusted the preemption language before Thursday’s markup, but Democrats said it still has the same effect of overriding state laws.
“What the hell are we doing here?” said Rep. Raul Ruiz, California Democrat. “Congress should set a federal floor for child safety, not erase state laws that are actively protecting kids today.”
California is among the states that have enacted their own online privacy and safety standards for minors. Plenty of red states, such as Texas and Florida, have their own laws as well.
Republicans spent little time in the markup countering each of Democrats’ arguments against the bill after months of private negotiations failed to produce a bipartisan compromise. They urged their colleagues to accept the package as a step in the right direction.
“This is a culmination of a lot of work by this committee to bring meaningful, durable protections to American children online and our efforts are genuine,” said Rep. Erin Houchin, Indiana Republican. “To say otherwise is offensive to those of us who have been working on this issue.”
Parental advocates who have lost children due to online harms attended the markup as they have other committee proceedings over the years.
Most still prefer the Senate version of KOSA over the evolving House product for the reasons the Democrats brought up during the markup. Many GOP senators agree their version is superior, although they have yet to advance it this Congress.
A coalition of various advocacy groups sent a letter to panel leaders ahead of the markup asking them not to advance the legislation as written.
“Every provision we fought for has been stripped or disclaimed,” they wrote. “Every loophole the companies sought has been written in.”
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, Massachusetts Democrat, called it a “false flag operation by Meta,” which has remained opposed to the Senate version that has support from X and Apple.
He suggested that Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, was behind the House knowledge standard and preemption language, which “nullifies everything that came before it.”
Rep. Diana Harshbarger, Tennessee Republican, said Democrats are the ones aiding the social media companies with their opposition to the bill.
“They’re pretending it’s for parents, but really it’s because they want to delay any legislation that goes against Big Tech at the expense of your and my children,” she said.
Mr. Auchincloss called that “absurd,” citing changes Democrats tried to make to the bill and Republicans shot down that would “go harder against Big Tech.”
The Energy and Commerce Committee also advanced two other bills related to kids’ online safety.
The App Store Accountability Act, which requires app stores to verify children are not able to access age-restricted material and gives parents more control over what their children can download, passed the panel along party lines.
Sammy’s Law, named after a child who died of fentanyl poisoning from a counterfeit drug he obtained through Snapchat, picked up a handful of Democratic votes.
The measure would require social media and gaming platforms to allow for third-party safety software integration that would alert parents when their children encounter harmful content.
