Bill
SB 503
Louisiana SB 503 creates a Minor Exploitation Prevention Act requiring age verification, parental controls, and age signaling for apps, with AG-only enforcement.
Title: Minor Exploitation Prevention Act
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Effective date: August 1, 2028
Purpose and intent
- Creates a new framework, titled the Minor Exploitation Prevention Act, to govern mobile application distribution with a focus on protecting minors and assuring age-appropriate experiences.
- Establishes requirements for application distribution providers, developers, and age verification (age assurance) processes.
- Grants the Louisiana Attorney General exclusive enforcement authority, with civil penalties for violations; explicitly rejects a private right of action.
Key definitions (Section 1776.2)
- Adult: account holder aged 18 or older.
- Minor: account holder under 18.
- Age category: classification of a user as minor, adult, or within an age range.
- Age signal: signal indicating an account holder’s age category, including how the determination was made.
- Application: software that runs on a connected device and is distributed through an application distributor (not including browsers or extensions).
- Application distributor: platform through which applications are distributed.
- Application distribution provider: entity that owns/operates the distribution platform.
- Developer: creator/owner/controller of an application.
- Covered application: app that provides a different experience for minors versus adults or is intended for adult use only.
- Connected device: internet-enabled device capable of downloading apps (phones, tablets, gaming consoles, VR devices).
- Minor and Adult account holders: as defined above.
Main provisions and requirements
1) Age assurance and age signaling (Section 1776.3)
- Application distribution provider must:
- Require users to declare their age at account creation.
- Use commercially reasonable efforts to determine the user’s age category.
- Provide a mechanism for users to view and update their age category.
- Provide developers of covered applications the ability to call an age signal, if the account holder or parent consents to share age category.
- Providers acting in good faith are not liable for:
- Inaccurate age signals.
- Conduct by a developer of a covered app that receives an age signal (except when the developer and provider are controlled by the same entity).
- Technical limitations preventing age signals.
- Not providing the age signal to non-compliant developers.
- Providers may use multiple commercially reasonable methods to determine age and may obtain a minor’s age from a parent.
2) Duties of the application distributor (Section 1776.4)
- Must:
- Enable parental or developer controls to restrict access to non-adults.
- Provide developers with the ability to disclose parental controls on a centralized product page/UI.
- Comply with obligations for its own covered applications (if it is also the developer).
- Prohibits the use of third-party data obtained during compliance for anti-competitive purposes.
3) Duties of the application developers (Section 1776.5)
- Must:
- Disclose whether the app provides different experiences for minors vs. adults.
- Provide tools to help parents support minors using the app (if not adult-only).
- Use commercially reasonable efforts to determine whether a user is an adult or minor.
- Take reasonable, risk-proportionate steps to prevent minors from engaging in adult-restricted activities.
- Obtain consent before allowing minors to access content/features designated as unsuitable for minors.
- Must not deliver personalized advertising to minors.
- If using an age signal, must:
- Request the minimum information necessary.
- Not disregard known age data.
- Not share age signal with third parties, except service providers as needed for safety/privacy protections or as required by law.
- Not use the signal beyond the stated compliance purposes.
- If the developer and provider are in the same entity, they need not determine whether a user is adult or minor.
4) Liability framework for developers and distributors (Section 1776.6)
- Developers are responsible for correctly identifying whether their app is a covered application.
- Application distributors are not required to proactively identify covered apps and are not liable for inaccuracies in information provided by developers.
- Developers are not liable for an erroneous age signal from the provider if they make reasonable efforts to use the signal correctly and implement appropriate age-assurance measures relative to risk.
5) Enforcement and penalties (Section 1776.7)
- The Attorney General has exclusive enforcement authority.
- No private right of action is created by this Part.
- Civil penalties: up to $1,000 per violation.
Who is affected
- Application distribution providers: must implement age declaration, age-category determination, age signaling access, parental controls, and compliance with this act.
- Developers of covered applications: must disclose age-related experiences, implement parental tools, determine user age with reasonable efforts, restrict minor access to adult content/features, obtain parental consent for unsuitable content/features, and refrain from minor-targeted personalized advertising.
- Parents and minors: have enhanced tools and controls through the distributor and developer interfaces.
- Service providers: may be involved when age signals are used and necessary to provide safety/privacy protections.
Timeline and process considerations
- Effective date: August 1, 2028.
- Compliance timeline for implementation is implicit but not specified in the text; entities would need to align systems and processes prior to August 1, 2028.
Notes
- The act emphasizes age assurance, parental controls, and safeguarding minors in digital app ecosystems.
- It introduces a structured liability framework that favors non-liability for good-faith compliance by distributors and reasonable efforts by developers.
- It centralizes enforcement with the Attorney General and precludes private litigation under this act.
Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.
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