Louisiana’s Age-Verification Proposal Is Unconstitutional and Anti-Parent

Recent state legislative sessions have seen numerous proposals aimed at protecting children online. While the proponents’ intentions are admirable, too many of these bills contain blatantly unconstitutional provisions, such as age-verification mandates. These mandates require users of all ages to submit to invasive verification processes. Such processes violate clear Supreme Court precedent and concentrate sensitive data in treasure troves, ripe for hacking.

Unfortunately, these concerns have not stalled the ever-increasing flood of dangerous legislation. The Louisiana State Senate will likely consider a proposal to mandate age verification at the app store level. If enacted, this proposal is almost assuredly bound for injunction in federal court — at great cost to the state’s taxpayers, who will pay for the bill’s doomed legal defense. If allowed to take effect before it is enjoined, it would violate Louisianans’ speech rights and weaken their privacy.

The Supreme Court and other federal courts have ruled that age verification mandates that block access to the exercise of First Amendment rights are unconstitutional. Age verification necessarily affects all users – not just children. Besides often violating the right to speak anonymously – a right recognized by the High Court in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) –  these mandates impose impermissible burdens on adults’ ability to access speech, whether it’s on social media or at the app store level. As one federal judge wrote in a 2023 opinion enjoining an Arkansas law, “It is likely that many adults who otherwise would be interested [in accessing online services] will be deterred – and their speech chilled – as a result of the age-verification requirements.”

Besides the legal issues, ill-conceived child-safety legislation impinge on traditionally respected zones of parental authority. Any proposal that applies a state-prescribed one-size-fits-all content filter for children under a set age substitutes the will of the government for that of the parent. Ordinarily, Americans understand that parents have the right – and obligation – to decide what media their children consume. Children – even children of the same age – vary greatly. Parents should be free to tailor their child’s media consumption to his or her maturity, personality, and other traits.

In particular, the government should not dictate which apps children may download on app stores. Using the government as a gatekeeper for apps sets a dangerous precedent.

Despite the myriad readily available child-safety tools already available to parents, many – even conservatives – have decided that the proverbial Nanny State must step in. Instead of prioritizing digital education – as Virginia has – or experimenting with phone policies in schools, too many states have jumped straight to invasive regulations that preempt parental judgement.

While justifiably eager to protect children, states like Louisiana must think twice before threatening their citizens’ speech rights and their families’ spheres of autonomy. Both online and off, parenting is difficult. However, that fact does not mean that the government should bulldoze the Constitution and throw parents aside in the name of safety.