Communities throughout Tennessee are being impacted by the 19 new state laws that have gone into force. However, a judge approved a motion for a preliminary injunction, leaving one of those statutes in limbo.
One of the two new rules designed to protect children as they use the internet is this one. To ensure that users are either older than eighteen or have parental consent, they both require age verification.
During the 2024 legislative session, Senator Becky Duncan Massey stated, “We need to apply the same standards in the cyber world that are in place in the physical world.”
The “Protect Tennessee Minors Act,” Senate Bill 1792, was sponsored by Massey. Websites must verify that users are at least eighteen. This is applicable to websites that contain at least one-third of “harmful to minors” content, such as pornography.
“We do not allow minors to go into adult establishments,” Rep. Patsy Hazlewood stated. “We do not allow minors access to written materials that are inappropriate. This bill would do the same thing in the cyber world.”
This rule does not apply to search engines, internet service providers, or public interest publications and broadcasts.
According to the law, website operators are required to compare a user’s photo to a legitimate form of identification, such as a mortgage or academic transcript. A Class C felony would be brought against the proprietor of a website that violates this rule.
There are other issues besides privacy. A lawsuit was filed by a group of individuals and businesses who claimed that this law was unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
According to the report, the rule would breach protected expression and designate websites as “adult businesses,” which might have detrimental effects like a decline in ad revenue and social stigma. Additionally, it claimed that the law violates the Due Process Clause because it is “impermissibly vague.”
A motion for a preliminary injunction was granted, and the ruling described this law as “scorched earth.”
House Bill 1891, sometimes referred to as the “Protecting Children from Social Media Act,” mandates that social media firms confirm the age of their users. The business must confirm parental consent before allowing a minor to create an account.
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There are no clear instructions on how this is supposed to operate. According to Rep. Jake McCalmon, it is purposefully ambiguous.
“It kind of leaves the ball in these platforms’ courts to determine how they’re going to carry this out,” McCalmon stated. “It requires that these companies make a genuine effort to verify the age and verify the consent of those parents before they’re able to have that account. It does retroactively apply to minors that have an account currently. There’s a 14-day cushion for them to be able to go back and have their parents sign off on it.”
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“The reason why we didn’t want to lay out specifically in the bill how they do that is because each company might do that differently,” Senior Policy Analyst Hannah Richardson continued. “Technology evolves all the time, so we didn’t want to put something in the bill telling a company how to do this, and then a better way come about or a different way or they have a way of doing it now that works.”
Parents can report to the state attorney general’s office, which will look into the matter, if they discover that a social media platform has broken this law by permitting a youngster to register for an account without their consent.
Similar laws have been passed in “several other states,” according to McCalmon. Louisiana’s statute serves as the model for Tennessee’s version.
Just two of the 19 legislation that will take effect on January 1st are these two. The others address anything from making renters provide specific contact details to updating juvenile court proceedings and more.