Guthrie Expects to File New Privacy Bills in 2025
Incoming House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., plans on introducing comprehensive and kids’ privacy bills in the new year, he told us Tuesday.
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“I believe it’s going to be a reset” on the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) and the Senate-approved Kids’ Online Safety Act (KOSA), he said. “We couldn't get across the finish line this Congress, so what we need to do is have a reset button and start a new process to see where we go. But it’s a priority. ... We’re going to get started on it as soon as we’re back in January.”
Expected Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told us he has no plans to take up APRA, the comprehensive bill that retiring House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., negotiated. That bill has “a lot of problems,” and the kids’ privacy concepts are “closer to the finish line,” Cruz said.
Guthrie said he agrees that kids’ privacy should be the first priority.
Current House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., told us legislators can work with the bipartisan bill. “People want comprehensive data privacy legislation,” he said. “Nobody tells me that they don’t want it. We’ll try to build on what we have and achieve a consensus.”
Cruz has spoken in opposition to APRA’s private right of action, its algorithmic regulations and proposed FTC authorities.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; House Innovation Subcommittee Chairman Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla.; and Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., have pushed for the House to consider KOSA before the end of the year. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he wants to “get the right” children’s safety legislation signed into law.
Cruz joined Cantwell, Blumenthal, Blackburn and Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., in a Dec. 4 letter, urging Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., to take up KOSA and the less controversial Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) before the end of the year.
“Get it done,” Cantwell told us. The kids’ package is “over there. We’ve already passed it [in] the Senate. The House just needs to pass it before we go home. Then we’d be done.'
The two chambers are tentatively scheduled to adjourn Friday provided they successfully negotiate a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown by that day's deadline.
Cruz has support from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Microsoft for his bipartisan deepfake AI bill with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (Take it Down) Act. It would establish criminal liability for those publishing nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes. The Senate approved it by unanimous consent earlier this month. UC passage “reflects how much legislation should be focused to a specific problem,” said Cruz.
Privacy is very important, but there’s “considerable work to be done to reach common ground” on a comprehensive bill, Cruz said. “There’s a meaningful divide between the two parties, and I think we have more work to do before we have legislation that will achieve consensus.”
The Senate passed KOSA and COPPA 2.0 by a 91-3 vote in July (see 2407300042). The House Commerce Committee passed its versions of the bills in September (see 2409180048), but they have stalled given the lack of support from House Republican leadership.