House Republicans revived federal child online safety legislation, but in doing so they stripped out the provision that gave the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) its sharpest legal edge, setting up a new fight over whether the House is still advancing KOSA in any meaningful way.
A bipartisan Senate version of the bill was previously passed by the Senate, which just unanimously passed the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act 2.0.
The new clash over KOSA centers on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s approval of the new Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act), a broad package that incorporates a rewritten version of KOSA alongside other child online safety measures.
In the new House bill, Republican lawmakers did not simply omit the Senate bill’s duty of care framework, they inserted language stating that nothing in the relevant section may be construed to “impose a duty of care on a provider of a covered platform.”
That language marks a clear break from the Senate approach that had made duty of care the bill’s central mechanism for platform accountability. The change is consequential because the duty of care provision was the legal heart of KOSA as it was crafted in the Senate.
Supporters of the Senate version have long described that requirement as the part of the bill that would force platforms to take reasonable measures in the design and operation of their products to prevent and mitigate harm to minors.
Senator Richard Blumenthal’s office still describes KOSA in those terms, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said last month that the Senate bill aims to protect children by imposing a duty of care on platforms and requiring them to prevent and mitigate harm including sexual exploitation, bullying, and self-harm.
House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, a Democrat, said the Republican bill leaves a “giant loophole” for Big Tech, saying it “allows tech companies and companies that collect kids’ data to continue to claim that they lacked actual knowledge or willfully disregarded knowledge that kids” are on their platforms.
Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis, who spearheaded the duty of care dilution, said during the markup of the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act that is the “most comprehensive kids online safety package” that the committee has put forth.
Rather than imposing a broad affirmative obligation on platforms to act with care toward minors, the House bill requires safeguards, parental tools, reporting mechanisms, disclosures, ad-related restrictions, third-party audits, and other design and policy features.
It also uses narrower liability-triggering language, including a definition of “know” that critics say makes it easier for companies to avoid responsibility unless actual knowledge or willful disregard can be shown.
The House bill still regulates platform conduct, but it does so without the sweeping liability concept that made KOSA both potent for supporters and controversial for opponents, which is why Democrats on the committee and critics immediately blasted House Republicans for gutting the bill.
During the markup, Rep. Kathy Castor said House Republicans had “eliminat[ed] the duty of care” and told colleagues flatly that “there is no duty of care in this bill.”
Representative Raul Ruiz said the absence of that standard meant platforms were not required to take proactive steps to protect children and could instead rely on self-defined “reasonable policies.”
Representative Kim Schrier went further, arguing that the House bill not only removed the standard from prior versions, but “actually bans any duty of care at the Federal or state level.”
Those objections were not limited to committee Democrats. The broader debate had been building for months as House Republicans worked on a package more acceptable to their caucus.
Before and after the markup the House effort moved away from the Senate’s framework precisely because the duty of care provision had become the most politically fraught part of KOSA.
Late last year Senate sponsors viewed duty of care as essential and had little appetite for watering it down, while the final House markup this month reflected that House Republicans had chosen a different path.
For supporters of stronger regulation, duty of care is what makes KOSA more than a transparency bill. It creates a legal benchmark for whether a platform has acted responsibly in the face of foreseeable harm to children, especially harms linked to design choices such as recommendation systems, addictive engagement features, contact from strangers, or the amplification of dangerous content.
Without that standard, critics say, the bill becomes easier for companies to satisfy through policy paperwork, settings changes, and procedural compliance while avoiding the kind of legal exposure that might alter incentives.
But that same provision has long been the flashpoint for civil liberties advocates, some Republicans, and other critics who fear the government would pressure platforms to suppress lawful speech in the name of child safety.
The controversy was especially intense in earlier KOSA fights, when critics warned that vague duties to protect minors could encourage platforms to over-censor content touching on mental health, sexuality, gender identity, or other sensitive subjects.
House Republicans appear to have concluded that a softened version had a better chance of advancing in their chamber, even if that meant alienating Senate champions and many parent advocates who saw duty of care as nonnegotiable.
The House move has also sharpened concerns about preemption. Opponents argue that a federal bill with weaker substantive obligations, combined with language limiting the reach of state law, could create a ceiling rather than a floor for child safety protections.
That concern surfaced during markup and has been echoed by state officials. A bipartisan coalition of 40 state and territorial attorneys general urged Congress in February to support the Senate version of KOSA while opposing the House companion bill, underscoring how much of the resistance is driven not by opposition to federal action itself, but by opposition to a version seen as weaker than what some states are already trying to do.
The result is that House Republicans have kept the KOSA label alive while changing the bill’s substance in a way that may be decisive for its future.
On paper, the House package still aims to protect minors online, but in practice would abandon the legal theory that made KOSA a serious threat to platform business models and design practices.
That leaves Congress with a familiar question in tech policy fights: soften a bipartisan compromise to pass something, or watering down the core enforcement mechanism and defeat the point of the exercise.
For now, the answer from many Senate allies and House Democrats is clear. They do not see the removal of duty of care as a technical edit or a modest narrowing. They see it as the moment the House version stopped being the robust KOSA that passed the Senate and became a very different bill altogether.
Article Topics
age verification | children | Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act) | Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) | legislation | U.S. Government | United States
