Several new laws went into effect over the weekend in Texas, with the most notable setting limits on children’s access to social media.
New legislation kicks in on Sept. 1 every year, though during an “even” year without a legislative session in the Lone Star State, there are fewer new laws to contend with.
Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said about a half a dozen laws went into effect on Sept. 1. Last year, after a regular legislative session and several ongoing special sessions, that number was closer to 800.
“The highlight is the SCOPE Act. That’s House Bill 18, the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act,” Jones said. “It’s designed to protect children online and provide protections and parental controls for their parents.
“It requires a whole host of registration rules [for platforms], most of which are already in place, as well as the agreement by the digital provider for social media like Snapchat and TikTok to do things to protect children, as well as to prevent advertisers from targeting them or collecting data and information on those children that could be used for any type of purpose, for commercial or otherwise.”
Part of the SCOPE Act did not go into effect this month after a federal judge temporarily blocked part of the bill on Friday. Jones said the part that was blocked was the most controversial aspect of the bill, requiring social media companies to prevent certain harms from coming to minors on their platforms.
“What the judge and many opponents have claimed is that the legislation is too broad because it requires these social media sites to prevent minors’ exposure to harmful material that promotes and glorifies or facilitates suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, stalking, bullying, harassment, grooming, trafficking, child pornography, and a whole host of other things,” he said. “And if the provider doesn’t provide filtering or some other techniques to prevent that information from getting to minors, they could be fined. I think it’s $10,000 per violation.”
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Jones said social media companies have remained largely quiet about this new piece of legislation. However, some people and groups that work with big online companies have expressed concerns over the reach of the law.
“People who work with them, who are involved in many of these lawsuits, are signaling that it’s unreasonable to expect the social media companies to engage in this type of filtering to prevent information … from reaching children,” he said. If they were required to do so, that would be financially and logistically difficult to do, and also would represent a potential restriction on First Amendment rights.
“We’re likely to see the legal dispute drag on with the social media companies on one side and Texas on the other side with this requirement that the social media companies implement measures to prevent harm, such as preventing any type of material that could be negatively impacting children, whether it’s pornography or trafficking information or grooming or harassment information, because simply that is not feasible under their current technical capacities without substantial cost.”
Jones also highlighted several other laws that took effect this month, including one that is aimed at pharmaceutical companies that produce insulin.
“This was sort of a shot across the bow for the companies that produce insulin, saying that the state is watching them if they’re essentially trying to boost their profits by preventing generic versions of their insulin products from reaching the market,” he said.
“There’s also an addition to the family violence legislation that now means that family violence services are often open to survivors of dating violence — something that wasn’t the case before. One other law that went into effect is a requirement that the state inform judges when someone has been in state jail for 75 days in an effort to prevent someone from serving more time in jail than a judge had intended.”
