TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida lawmakers have introduced legislation to require manufacturers to equip tablets and smartphones with a filter that would prevent all users from accessing material deemed harmful to minors, to be automatically enabled on devices activated in that state.
Similar legislation has been enacted in Utah and is currently pending in Alabama. However, the Utah law and the Alabama bill specify that filters must be automatically enabled only when a device is activated by a minor. By contrast, the Florida bill, as written, would apply to all users regardless of age.
HB 1503 and its identical companion bill, SB 1718, require that the filter must notify users when websites or app downloads are blocked, and give users with a password the opportunity to unblock a filtered application or website. Confusingly, it does not require that users with passwords be given an opportunity to disable the filter entirely — though it does prohibit users without passwords from doing so.
The bill appears to equate “a user with a password” with an adult supervising a minor’s device use, though strangely this is never specified.
Free speech advocates have argued that age verification laws such as Florida’s HB 3 are unconstitutional because they stifle adults’ access to legal adult content in the name of preventing minors from viewing it.
Industry attorney and First Amendment expert Lawrence Walters, of Florida-based Walters Law Group, told XBIZ that requiring activation of a device filter by default for all users is "clearly not the least restrictive means of addressing any compelling state interest in protecting minors."
"As other states have done, Florida could have only required the filter when the device is activated by a minor," said Walters. "This requirement renders the bill vulnerable to a constitutional challenge under the First Amendment, if passed into law. Under the applicable strict scrutiny test, the state must use the least restrictive alternative when imposing burdens on adults accessing protected speech."
Free Speech Coalition's Director of Public Policy Mike Stabile noted another issue underlying this and similar legislation.
"Whether it's age estimation or verification or some other process, whether it's platform-based or device-based or app-based, you have to require everyone to submit so that you can identify the minors," Stabile said. "Proponents of KOSA have argued that the bill's duty-of care-provisions only apply to minors, but how are platforms to know unless they actively verify the identity of every visitor? You can't magically make anything apply to 'just' minors."
HB 1503 was introduced by Republican state Rep. Michelle Salzman, and will next be heard in the House Commerce Committee’s Industries & Professional Activities Subcommittee.
SB 1718 was introduced by Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, and has been referred to multiple committees, including the Criminal Justice Committee.