The Maryland Legislature this weekend passed two sweeping privacy bills aimed at restricting how powerfully tech platforms can harvest and use the personal data of consumers and youth — despite strong opposition from industry trade groups representing giants such as Amazon, Google and Meta.
A bill, the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act, will impose a wide range of restrictions on how companies can collect and use consumers’ personal data in the state. The other, that Maryland Kids Codewill ban certain social media, video games and other online platforms from tracking people under 18 and from using manipulative techniques — such as automatically playing videos or bombarding children of notifications — to keep young people connected online.
“We’re making a statement to the tech industry, and to Marylanders, that we need to stop some of this data collection,” Delegate said. Sarah Love, a Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates. Ms. described Love, who sponsored the consumer bill and cosponsored the children’s bill, called the passage of the two measures a “huge” privacy milestone, adding: “We need to put some guardrails in place to protect our consumers.”
The new rules require approval by Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, a Democrat, has not taken a public stance on the measures.
In passing the bills, Maryland joins a handful of states including California, Connecticut, Texas and Utah that have enacted both comprehensive privacy laws and children’s online privacy or social media safeguards. But the tech industry has challenged some of the new laws.
Over the past year, NetChoice, a tech industry trade group representing AmazonGoogle and Meta, have successfully sued to stop children’s online privacy or social media restrictions in several states, arguing that the laws violated the constitutional rights of its members to freely share information.
NetChoice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Maryland Kids Code is modeled after a 2022 California law, called the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. Like the California law, the Maryland bill would require certain social media and video game platforms to turn on the highest privacy settings by default for minors. It would also prohibit services from unnecessarily profiling minors and collecting their specific locations.
A federal judge in California, however, temporarily blocked the state’s children’s law, ruling in favor of NetChoice on free speech grounds. (The New York Times and the Student Press Law Center filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief (last year in a California case in support of NetChoice, arguing that the law could limit the newsworthy content available to students.)
NetChoice has similarly objected to the Maryland Kids Code. In testimony last year opposing an earlier version of the bill, Carl Szabo, NetChoice’s general counsel, argued that it impeded companies’ rights to freely share information as well as the rights of minors and adults to freely obtain information.
Maryland lawmakers say they have worked with constitutional experts and revised it to address free speech concerns. The bill passed unanimously.
“We’re technically the second state to pass the Kids Code,” Delegate said Jared Solomon, a Democratic state legislator who sponsored the children’s code bill. “But we hope to be the first state to withstand the inevitable court challenge that we know is coming.”
Several other trade groups in the technology industry strongly opposed the other bill passed Saturday, the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act.
That bill would require companies to reduce the data they collect about online consumers. It would also prohibit online services from collecting or sharing intimate personal information — such as data on ethnicity, religion, health, sexual orientation, precise location, biometrics or immigration status — unless it is “strictly necessary. ”
