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Lawmakers in St. Paul are debating this week whether to pass a sweeping new law that would silence online speech and put state officials between Minnesota parents and their children. It's a well-intentioned but flawed proposal that other states have already considered and rejected. Minnesota should do the same and remain a leader in protecting our First Amendment rights.
Across America, activists from a group based in England are pushing state legislatures, including Minnesota's, to adopt what they call Age-Appropriate Design Code Acts (AADCAs). These bills would force publishers to censor what they show to their readers or face costly, complicated and unconstitutional government mandates. And if publishers guess wrong about how to comply with the vague and confusing language in these bills, they face the risk of whopping fines.
These overbroad bills don't just target social media giants. They would also apply to the news websites based in and outside of Minnesota that we all rely upon to know what's happening in the world, from the Star Tribune to the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.
The thrust of AADCAs is that any website "likely to be accessed by children" (that is, anyone under 18) must "complete a data protection impact assessment" before launching "any new online services, products or features to the public," which could be anything from a new podcast to a new book review section to a new comic in the funny pages. Businesses have to update every one of those assessments every other year, potentially forever, no matter the time and expense involved. The goal of these efforts is to chill websites from publishing what the bill calls "harmful or potentially harmful content" unless they try to keep out anyone under 18.
Supporters of these bills say that AADCAs foster "an emerging global standard for the protection of children's rights and privacy online." But as media law attorneys based in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., our job is to protect freedom of speech and of the press as set out in the First Amendment — even when other countries might do things differently. That includes helping publishers such as daily newspapers report the news and keep their readers, young and old, informed about all the issues of the day.
AADCAs like the one proposed in Minnesota might sound good in the abstract — we all want to protect children from real harm — but the devil is in the details, and AADCAs have the details all wrong. They keep young readers in the dark by letting the state decide what counts as "potentially harmful content" and punishing publishers who, according to the state, don't do enough to keep that "potentially harmful content" locked away from the general public. At the same time, they impose such expensive burdens on publications like this one that it would be even harder for them to bring important news to full-grown adults.
