House Bill 219 Alabama 2026 Session

Summary

Primary Sponsor

Mike ShawRepresentative

Republican

Session

2026 Regular Session

Title

Consumer protection; software applications, age appropriateness, rules established for app developers and app distribution providers, civil penalties established

Summary

HB219 creates the Access & Responsible Digital Safety Act to regulate age checks, age signals, and parental controls for apps, with enforcement and penalties by the Attorney General.

What This Bill Does

App store operators must ask users to declare their age at account creation and provide a way to share an age signal with developers of covered apps. They must give account holders and parents information and tools about age signals and age-appropriate content, and allow minors to be blocked from adult-only experiences in covered apps. Developers of covered apps must report if their apps treat adults and minors differently, provide parental tools, seek parental consent for minor access to restricted content, and avoid advertising to minors. The Attorney General enforces violations with civil penalties, and the act contains good-faith liability protections; it takes effect January 1, 2027.

Who It Affects

• Account holders (and their parents) will be asked to declare age and will receive age signals and parental-control tools to manage age-appropriate app access.
• App store operators and developers will have new duties to collect and share age signals, implement age-appropriate safeguards, report age-related differences, and potentially face civil penalties enforced by the Attorney General.

Key Provisions

• Establishes the Access & Responsible Digital Safety Act and defines key terms (adult, minor, age signal, age category, covered application, app store operator, etc.).
• App store operators must ask for age at account creation, provide access to age signals to developers and parents with consent, allow blocking of minors from covered apps, and provide parental-control information centrally.
• Covered-app developers must report whether their apps offer different experiences by age, provide parental-support tools, determine age with reasonable certainty, obtain parental consent for minor access to restricted content, and refrain from advertising to minors.
• App stores and developers may use commercially reasonable methods to obtain or estimate age and may obtain a minor's age from a parent; data use must be limited to safety and privacy protections.
• Good-faith compliance provides liability protections for app stores and developers for issues like erroneous age signals or outages; liability is limited in certain circumstances.
• Enforcement is exclusive to the Attorney General, with no private right of action, and civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation.
• Effective date is January 1, 2027.

AI-generated summary using openai/gpt-5-nano-2025-08-07 on Mar 4, 2026. May contain errors — refer to the official bill text for accuracy.

Subjects

Consumer Protection