Committee advances age‑verification bill allowing private suits and AG enforcement after cleanup amendment

The committee considered a committee substitute for House Bill 4412 to create a new chapter (49A) establishing civil liability for entities that knowingly publish or distribute material harmful to minors without reasonable age verification.

Counsel explained the substitute creates a private cause of action for harmed minors, parents, guardians or legally permitted persons and authorizes the attorney general to seek injunctive relief and damages, including attorney fees. Civil damages could include a flat statutory award of $10,000 per incident plus actual damages for financial, physical or emotional harm; the attorney general could seek penalties of up to $250,000 under the statute and consider factors such as prior violations and whether the violation was knowing when setting an amount "necessary to deter future violation." Counsel said a five‑year statute of limitations with the discovery rule would apply and that the bill contains privacy protections and carve‑outs for news organizations, internet service providers, search engines, applications and cloud service providers so long as they did not create the offending content.

Senators pressed counsel on whether social media platforms would be covered. Counsel said the bill applies to entities where a "substantial portion" of content (described in the substitute as roughly one‑third or 33.33%) meets the definition of material harmful to minors; in practice counsel said the issue would likely be litigated and could require technical expert testimony about the proportion of offending content on a given site.

Senator from Brooke and others raised drafting concerns about parallel language across subsections (causes of action, who may bring suit, and AG enforcement) and whether child sexual exploitation language was properly mirrored in the AG provision. Senator 11 proposed cleanup language and an amendment to add child sexual exploitation into the AG cause‑of‑action provisions; counsel agreed the clarifications would be consistent with the bill's intent and appropriate to include.

Counsel noted the substitute borrows the definition of harmful material from existing obscenity law and referenced a recent Supreme Court decision described in committee as the "Paxton decision" upholding similar state requirements; counsel said the statute's structure and the 33% metric are generally modeled on other states' laws and would likely be subject to litigation on metrics and constitutional scrutiny.

The committee adopted the senator's cleanup amendment by voice vote and then adopted the strike‑and‑insert as amended; the vice chair moved that House Bill 4412 as amended be reported to the full Senate with a recommendation that it do pass. The motions and a title amendment were adopted by voice vote; the bill will be reported to the full Senate.