To enact sections 1349.07, 1349.071, 1349.072, 1349.073, 1349.074, 1349.075, and 1349.076 of the Revised Code to establish age verification and parental consent requirements for certain developers and application stores.
HB302 would create a new set of age-verification, parental-consent, and content-filtering requirements for parts of Ohio’s digital ecosystem. The bill applies to application distribution providers, developers of “covered applications,” operating system providers, internet browsers, and search engines on connected devices such as smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and virtual reality devices. It requires account holders to declare their age, gives providers the ability to estimate age categories, and requires tools for parents to control minors’ access to certain content and features. It also requires covered applications to provide parental-support tools, restrict minors from adult-only activities, and avoid personalized advertising to minors.
The bill further requires operating system providers to enable a device-level filter for minors and requires browsers and search engines to offer and activate a filter that blocks obscene material when enabled by a parent or account holder. It includes technical and compliance provisions, such as age-signal sharing between app stores and developers, limits on how that information may be used, and rules preventing anti-competitive use of data collected in compliance with the bill. Enforcement would be centralized in the Ohio Attorney General, who could seek civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation, and the bill expressly bars private lawsuits.
If enacted, HB302 would add new sections 1349.07 through 1349.076 to the Ohio Revised Code and impose affirmative duties on app stores, app developers, operating system providers, browsers, and search engines. It would also create legal definitions for terms such as “minor,” “adult,” “covered application,” “age signal,” and “verifiable parental consent,” and it would take effect one year after the effective date of Section 1. The bill would not directly regulate websites generally, but it would affect software distribution and device-level access controls on connected devices.
The available context shows no recorded committee testimony or votes, and the bill is only listed as introduced and pending in the House Judiciary Committee. As a result, there is no documented public sentiment from hearings or floor action in the provided materials. Based on the bill’s structure, it appears aimed at child safety and parental control online, but the absence of debate records means the level of support or opposition cannot be measured from the supplied history.
Potential points of contention are likely to center on privacy, age-assurance accuracy, technical feasibility, and the burden placed on app stores, developers, and platform providers. The bill’s requirements to estimate age, share age signals, and implement filtering could raise concerns about data collection, false positives or negatives, and whether the mandates are workable across different technologies. Another likely issue is the scope of the obligations on browsers, search engines, and app distributors, as well as the bill’s prohibition on private enforcement and its exclusive reliance on the Attorney General for enforcement.
HB302 would create new statutory obligations in Chapter 1349 of the Revised Code for application distribution providers, developers of covered applications, operating system providers, internet browsers, and search engines. It would require age declaration and verification mechanisms, parental-consent processes, age-signal sharing, device-level filtering, and restrictions on personalized advertising to minors, while also authorizing the Attorney General to enforce the law through civil penalties and eliminating private rights of action.
The bill’s apparent policy direction is child protection and parental control over digital content, with requirements designed to limit minors’ access to adult material and certain app features. However, the provided record contains no committee testimony, amendments, or votes, so there is no direct evidence of support or opposition in the available legislative history. Any assessment of sentiment must therefore be inferred from the bill’s purpose rather than from recorded debate.
Likely areas of contention include whether age verification and age estimation can be implemented accurately and without excessive privacy intrusion, whether the bill imposes heavy compliance costs on app stores and platform operators, and whether the filtering and parental-consent mandates are technically feasible across devices and services. Stakeholders may also disagree over the breadth of the definitions of covered applications and connected devices, the treatment of browser and search engine filtering, and the decision to vest exclusive enforcement authority in the Attorney General while barring private lawsuits.