Armando J. Ibarra: Liberal overreach threatens to derail Kids Online Safety Act

The PROTECT Our Children Act will continue the effort on internet safety.

At both the state and federal levels, legislators are taking action to protect children online and ensure healthy social media habits for teens in the digital age. These legislative efforts, rooted in worthy intent and an important public interest, have ignited a vigorous debate over the means of achieving such protection.

Here in Florida, for example, parental rights groups protested when the state legislature passed legislation that would have overridden parents’ control over their kids’ social media. Luckily, Gov. Ron DeSantis stayed true to his word and sided with parents, vetoing the social media ban and working with the legislature to empower parents instead.

In Washington, however, bipartisan support for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is at risk due to last-minute changes pushed by liberal activists that would undermine parental rights and centralize the power to censor in a Washington bureaucracy with little accountability to the American people.

This liberal overreach threatens to alienate conservatives and moderates alike and doom the bill before it even hits the Senate floor.

This controversial new language in KOSA would favor federal oversight by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rather than the nuanced enforcement of state attorneys general (AGs) that had previously been KOSA’s intended enforcement mechanism. KOSA’s original language, which gave state AGs enforcement power, made perfect sense because their proximity to their communities would allow them to adeptly navigate the complex balance between regulation, privacy, and innovation.

The decision to change KOSA so that enforcement authority sits with the FTC should raise alarm bells for anyone who cares about the effectiveness of this legislation and is even remotely concerned with government overreach.

Since the beginning of FTC Chair Lina Khan’s tenure in the Biden administration, the agency has been embroiled in scandal and dysfunction. Just last month, the House Judiciary Committee released a report exposing the FTC’s mismanagement, waste, and abuse of government resources in order to advance a “radical agenda detached from the FTC’s legal mandates.” This is not an organization we should be putting in charge of policing the content that youth see online.

The vagueness of certain KOSA provisions invites a range of abusive interpretations that could easily lead to a censorious approach to online content. We’ve seen countless examples of federal regulations that veered into the suppression of free speech and the erosion of privacy.

Swapping out state AG authority for a federal enforcer with an objective to spread partisan ideas not only undermines the bill’s purpose but also opens KOSA up to valid criticism from parents who don’t want Khan in the middle of children’s social media experiences.

If Washington lawmakers are serious about protecting kids online, they should restore state AGs authority in KOSA. Enforcement at the state level will ensure the law doesn’t expand beyond the intended scope and it avoids the consequences that would arise from allowing bureaucrats at the FTC to inject its progressive policy agenda into legislation intended to help protect children online.

Thankfully, Republicans have begun to wake up to the realities of this new KOSA language and question whether this bill will do more to protect children or to enhance the power of Washington bureaucrats.

Every Senate co-sponsor of KOSA — including Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott — should read this new language taking power away from state AGs, like Florida’s Ashley Moody, and recalibrate this legislation to ensure that it protects children, preserves parental rights, and prevents government overreach.

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Armando J. Ibarra is a government affairs executive and policy adviser for companies, organizations, and leaders in the U.S. and Latin America. He serves as Chair of the Miami Young Republicans and Secretary of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans.