House Energy and Commerce Committee unveils new draft children’s online safety bill

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday unveiled a host of new bills designed to protect kids online, including a new version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) which omits a key provision included in an earlier failed version of the legislation.

The removed element is known as the duty of care, which would have made big tech liable by law for social harms resulting from use of their products. The version of KOSA which passed in the Senate by an overwhelming margin in July 2024 and included a duty of care stalled in the House where leadership was concerned about the law’s impact on free speech.

Instead of a duty of care, the KOSA draft includes language saying that platforms must establish and maintain “reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” that address harms to minors, including threats of physical violence, sexual exploitation and drug sales. 

Those policies and procedures would be adaptable depending on the size and complexity of the platform and the “technological feasibility” of addressing the harms, the draft bill says.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider the draft KOSA legislation — along with 18 other bills focused on protecting children from internet harms — at a Tuesday hearing. 

The hearing will be the first step in what promises to be a fierce battle over how to best protect kids online. The tech industry has lobbied against new regulations for years and rigorously fought KOSA in the last Congressional session.

Parents for kids who have died by suicide due to sextortion, cyberbullying and other online harms also have lobbied, joining KOSA’s Senate sponsors Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) for multiple emotional rallies. 

Additional kids online safety bills also were unveiled Tuesday, including the App Store Accountability Act. That legislation seeks to pass a federal law similar to several state laws already in place which require app stores to verify users’ ages.

The committee also has brought back the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), which creates privacy safeguards for children online for anyone under 17 instead of 13.