Bill
HB 1593
Requires covered platforms to verify user ages to block minor access to sexual material; parents can sue for damages, with penalties and privacy safeguards.
Status & procedural timeline
- Introduced: December 12, 2024 (sponsors: Reps. Hendrix, Bolinske, VanWinkle, K. Anderson, M. Ruby, McLeod, Frelich, Steiner; Senators Boehm, Paulson, Castaneda, Clemens).
- Judiciary Committee: Committee report / amendments adopted (Feb 12, 2025).
- Reported to second reading; recorded status (per provided summary): second reading, failed to pass — yeas 36, nays 53.
- Multiple draft versions appear in the record; this summary focuses on the North Dakota text and key variations across drafts.
Purpose and intent
- To hold online commercial entities / “covered platforms” liable when sexual material harmful to minors is published or distributed on their sites unless they implement and use reasonable age‑verification methods that prevent minor access. The bill also provides civil remedies, penalties, and privacy requirements for age‑verification systems.
Key provisions (major elements)
- Definitions: establishes terms including “covered platform” (website that in regular course of business creates, hosts, or makes available content harmful to minors), “minor” (under 18), “publish/distribute,” “reasonable age verification,” “sexual material harmful to a minor,” and “substantial portion” (in some drafts defined as >33⅓% of site content).
- What constitutes harmful material: adopts a Miller‑style standard — material that (1) appeals to prurient interest, (2) is patently offensive with respect to minors (lists examples: depictions of pubic hair, genitals, nipples, sexual acts, etc.), and (3) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for a minor. Some drafts explicitly include “obscene, indecent, or child pornography.”
- Age verification requirements: platforms that knowingly publish/distribute such material must use “reasonable age verification methods” (examples listed across drafts include state-issued IDs, digitized IDs, government IDs, credit/debit cards, bank account information, or commercially reasonable transactional‑data methods or commercial age‑verification systems).
- Privacy/anonymization: verification systems must be designed to anonymize identities and may not retain identifying information after access is granted; third‑party verifiers may not retain identifying information (some drafts require the verifier to be incapable of creating a record of online activity).
- Geographic/residency limitation (in one draft): applies only to minors who are permanent residents of the state and have been present in the state for at least 31 consecutive days.
- Liability, remedies, and penalties:
- Civil causes of action: parents/guardians of a minor who gained access and individuals whose identifying information was retained may sue.
- Remedies: injunctions, compensatory and exemplary (punitive) damages, costs and attorney fees.
- Administrative/enforcement: one draft assigns enforcement to the Attorney General.
- Monetary fine: one version imposes a $10,000 per‑day fine for each day a violation occurs.
- Safe‑harbors/exemptions: bona fide news/public‑interest broadcasts/reports and news‑gathering organizations are exempt. Internet service providers, search engines, cloud providers, and application stores are not liable solely for providing access or transmission if they are not content creators.
Who is affected
- Primary: websites and commercial entities/“covered platforms” that create or host sexual content meeting the bill’s definition.
- Secondary: third‑party age‑verification vendors (subject to non‑retention rules), parents/guardians (gain private right of action), minors, and state AG (if enforcement assigned). ISPs/search engines/cloud providers are explicitly protected from liability for mere transmission or hosting not under their control.
Potential impacts and considerations
- Compliance costs: platforms may need to implement robust age‑verification systems and privacy/anonymization safeguards.
- Privacy tension: the bill seeks age verification while forbidding retention of identifying data — technical approaches (tokenized or third‑party attestations) would be required.
- Legal exposure: civil liability and per‑day fines (in some drafts) create significant financial risk for noncompliant platforms.
- Draft variations: multiple versions differ on scope (threshold “substantial portion” vs any site), terminology (commercial entity vs covered platform), residency limits, and penalty amounts — these materially affect coverage and enforcement.
Note: The legislative record provided includes other unrelated HB 1593 bills from different states and multiple draft variants; the summary above reflects the North Dakota proposals and their key differences as found in the documents.
Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.
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