Senators bundle consumer-protection, money-transmitter and online-safety measures into committee package and advance LB838
Get AI-powered insights, summaries, and transcripts
Subscribe
Summary
The Legislature adopted a committee amendment that folded multiple bills into LB838, including revisions to protections for vulnerable adults at financial institutions, equipment-dealer protections, estate-and-trust modernizations, money-transmitter national-security safeguards, rounding rules for cash transactions and online-ad/children’s design measures. Senators raised concerns about foreign-adversary language and data-retention provisions before the amendment passed.
Senator Jacobson opened LB838 as a consumer-protection priority focused on safeguarding vulnerable and senior adults from financial exploitation and described AM 2,326, the committee amendment that incorporates four additional bills into the priority measure.
The amendment package includes: LB8 75 (equipment-dealer protections to bar waiver clauses and preserve return rights for surplus parts); LB1160 (modernization of estate and trust law, including increases to intestate shares and homestead/exempt-property allowances effective July 1, 2027); LB1063 (updates to the Money Transmitters Act to require licensure for informal value-transfer systems and to include ownership/control guardrails involving foreign adversaries); and LB837 (an optional rounding standard for cash transactions to the nearest nickel).
Senator Bostar explained LB1063’s national-security rationale: requiring licensure for informal value-transfer systems and disallowing ownership or control by foreign adversaries would close regulatory gaps and protect data and funds from being compelled under foreign law. Senator Conrad and others pressed for clarity about legislative findings and flagged potential federal preemption, constitutional concerns (commerce clause and impairment of contract), and unintended consequences for economic-development programs if the foreign-adversary language is too broad. Several senators also questioned data-retention and verification language tied to online-safety provisions added later in the package.
Senator Bozeman moved to further amend the committee package with AM 24 63 to add LB1118 (making misleading social-media advertisements enforceable under the Nebraska Deceptive Trade Practices Act, with identity-verification and a seven-day removal requirement for fraudulent ads) and LB1119 (technical changes and clarifications to the age-appropriate online design code, including deletion-request processes and thresholds for covered companies). Sponsors said the additions would strengthen consumer protections and child-safety guardrails.
Floor concerns concentrated on two areas: (1) whether the committee’s legislative findings naming certain foreign adversaries were necessary, accurate or ripe for challenge, and (2) the operational difficulty and privacy implications of requiring vendors to retain or destroy age-verification data. Senator Conrad urged caution and suggested removing or revising the legislative-intent language and seeking legal analysis on constitutional issues before broad implementation.
The Legislature adopted AM 24 63 and then adopted AM 2,326. The clerk recorded the committee-amendment adoption (34 ayes, 2 nays) and later recorded LB838’s advancement to E & R initial.