House passes KIDS Act over privacy and state-federal clash concerns

The House passed H.R. 7757, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, by a vote of 267 to 117, sending a broad child-safety bill to the Senate with sharp warnings already in place over privacy, speech and state authority. House Energy and Commerce leaders said the measure would create new rules for design features, default settings and children’s privacy, while also banning targeted advertising to young people and preserving parents’ ability to seek justice in court.

The legislation reached the floor after months of negotiations between Chairman Brett Guthrie and Ranking Member Frank Pallone. House Energy and Commerce leaders released revised text on June 22, then pushed the package through the chamber six days later with support from both parties. Rep. Kathy Castor, who backed the bill, said it would ban targeted advertising to young people, and committee leaders Gus Bilirakis and Castor joined Guthrie and Pallone in casting the vote as a major step after years of congressional efforts to address online harms affecting minors.

The bill does more than narrow advertising. Its supporters say it would impose new rules on how platforms design products, set defaults and handle children’s privacy, and it also folds in related provisions touching AI chatbots, compulsive usage, parental controls and online privacy. That scope is part of what has made the measure a central test of whether Congress can build a workable national standard without leaving families, schools and platforms under a patchwork of conflicting rules.

Opposition hardened before the vote. A bipartisan coalition of 44 attorneys general, organized through the National Association of Attorneys General, warned on May 26 that the bill could broadly preempt state laws and limit states’ ability to respond to online harms affecting children and adolescents. The attorneys general said the package lacked a comprehensive duty-of-care requirement and stronger age-assurance protections, raising questions about whether it would displace existing state efforts without creating a clear federal substitute.

Digital rights groups made a separate attack on the bill’s mechanics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the measure would push online services to verify users’ ages and could threaten privacy, free expression and encrypted or private communications. It argued that mandatory age checks could chill lawful speech, especially around mental health, sexuality and drug use. The Senate has yet to settle on a final direction, and lawmakers there continue to weigh competing approaches and tougher or different child-safety rules.