Conference committee reviews amendments to App Store Accountability Act, plans to place measure into SB 157

The conference committee convened to consider amendments to Senate Bill 372, the App Store Accountability Act, and to whether to place the measure into the shell of Senate Bill 157.

The chair opened the session and said members had prepared an amendment in response to testimony and previous conference discussions and proposed first placing the measure into Senate Bill 157 before distributing the amendment.

Natalie, the committee revisor, summarized the key edits being offered. She said the draft would change subsection C on page seven so that “nothing in the section shall preclude any civil or criminal remedy sought against an app store provider or developer that is authorized under state or federal law.” She also described a safe-harbor provision intended to limit provider liability when a platform “generate[s] an erroneous age category signal” if the provider used commercially available age verification methods, exercised due care, and made reasonable efforts to reconcile discrepancies between a parent’s attestation and other age data.

Natalie also said the amendment adds language to make clear the bill would not require creation of a digital identification system, an insertion intended to address opponents’ concerns that the act might mandate digital IDs.

Some committee members said they had not had time to review the amendment in detail and raised process concerns. One member criticized handling substantive changes late in the schedule and noted much of the earlier discussion occurred in closed-door sessions rather than on the floor: “I don’t think that doing this at 9:00 at night at the end game is doing it right the first time,” the member said, urging that an interim committee would be a better forum for resolving outstanding issues.

A proponent of the house offer defended the changes, saying the house returned the bill to conference after multiple days of hearings and working sessions and that the current offer incorporates amendments taken from chamber debate and negotiated changes with stakeholders (including a Walmart amendment that the member said had made the company neutral). That member said the edits are intended to address concerns raised by both opponents and proponents during prior deliberations.

After a brief confer, members reported that the Senate would accept the offer and place SB 372 into the shell of Senate Bill 157. The transcript records acceptance of the offer and the plan to move the bill into SB 157; it does not record a formal roll-call vote on final adoption of the amendment language.

The committee recessed to allow further conferring across caucuses and to determine next steps.