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1 1 (August 17, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govemoa0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional ______ R' fesearch Service Online Age Verification (Part III): Select Constitutional Issues August 17, 2023 This Legal Sidebar is the third installment in a three-part series on efforts to require online services to verify the ages of their users. Part I provided an overview of elements common in age verification laws. Part II discussed constitutional principles that may be relevant in assessing the constitutionality of age verification laws. This part applies the principles discussed in Part II to the elements of age verification laws discussed in Part I and offers considerations for Congress on the issue of implementing federal laws imposing age verification requirements. Constitutional challenges to age verification laws may raise several issues. Many of the questions regarding the constitutionality of age verification laws may concern whether such laws are sufficiently narrow to avoid inhibiting more speech than necessary. The degree of tailoring required may vary depending on whether a given law is content based or content neutral. In both circumstances a law's constitutionality would depend on several factors, including (1) the strength of the government's interest, (2) the amount of protected speech that the law directly or indirectly restricts, and (3) the availability of less speech-restrictive alternatives. Whether a Law is Content Based or Content Neutral As discussed in Part II, laws restricting speech are subject to different legal standards depending on whether the laws target speech based on its content. Age verification laws focused on pornography or material that is harmful to minors are likely content based. Whether laws targeting social media are content based may be a more challenging question. Supreme Court case law suggests that speaker-based restrictions on speech-for example, laws that target particular websites-are not per se content-based restrictions. Because social media websites can host a variety of material, a law that broadly defines social media may not regulate these sites based on the substance of material that they host. Laws with content- based exceptions-such as Utah's social media law, which includes numerous exceptions for websites that provide certain types of content-may be subject to First Amendment challenges on the basis of their exceptions even if the rest of the law is deemed content neutral. A law that imposes requirements based on a website's target audience or user demographics may be more likely to be deemed content neutral, though this is not a foregone conclusion. California's CAADC requires age estimation for any online service, product or feature likely to be accessed by children. In a Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11022 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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