SCREEN Act

Overview

The Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net Act (SCREEN Act, S.737 in the 119th Congress) is the leading federal bill to nationalize age verification for any online platform that creates, hosts, or makes available content “harmful to minors” as a regular course of profit-making business. Introduced February 26, 2025 by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), with cosponsors Sens. Curtis and Banks. As of May 2026 the bill is in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; no committee action yet recorded. The bill’s structural significance is that it explicitly architecturally authorizes third-party verification vendors to hold the biometric/ID database that constitutes the verification — the federal-statute-level instance of the vendor workaround pattern.

Key Facts

• Sponsor: Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT); cosponsors Sens. Curtis and Banks SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Status: Introduced 2026-02-26; referred to Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation; no further action as of 2026-05-24 SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Covered platforms: any interactive computer service engaged in interstate commerce that creates, hosts, or makes available “harmful to minors” content as a regular course of business — regardless of whether such content is the sole or principal source of income (§3(3)(B)). The definition reaches well past adult-content sites alone SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Self-attestation explicitly insufficient (§4(b)(2)); verification must be technological SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• All U.S. IPs subject, including VPN IPs (§4(b)(4)) — only users determined to be outside the U.S. are exempt SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Third-party verification vendors explicitly authorized (§4(d)) — platform retains liability, vendor liability framework unaddressed in the bill text SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• FTC enforces (§7) — violations treated as unfair or deceptive acts under 15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B). Routes around HIPAA and Section 230 SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Data security minimum-floor only (§4(f)) — “reasonable” + “no longer than reasonably necessary.” No specific encryption, audit, breach-notification, or deletion standards SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Findings argue technology has rendered age verification “least restrictive means” (§2) — explicitly positions SCREEN as Congress’s response to the Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656 (2004), failures of the Communications Decency Act and Child Online Protection Act SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text.
• Sibling vehicle to KOSA, EARN IT, STOP CSAM in the child-safety legislative cluster — different mechanism (mandatory verification vs. KOSA’s duty of care), same surveillance-infrastructure consequence Bad Internet Bills — Fight for the Future Campaign Hub.
• Federal extension of state-level age-verification laws — 19 states have passed online ID-check laws by late 2025; SCREEN would impose the requirement nationally Bad Internet Bills — Fight for the Future Campaign Hub.

Newsletter Relevance

SCREEN is the cleanest legislative-text-level instance of the vendor workaround pattern the TCN article The Bill of Rights Ends at the Contractor’s Door documents across surveillance, speech, biometrics, and health data. The structural pair is direct: Congress cannot compel disclosure of children’s biometric data; the bill mandates that platforms collect or contract for it; the contracted vendor holds the resulting database; the bill’s liability framework runs to the platform but stops at the vendor. Every U.S. adult who wants to access a covered platform sits in the vendor’s database by default. The “least restrictive means” argument is the bill’s constitutional attack surface — past versions (CDA, COPA) failed Ashcroft; SCREEN’s §2 Findings preempt that ruling at the rhetorical level but cannot preempt it at the as-applied level once breaches, VPN-IP sweeps, and selectively-enforced verification regimes generate a real record.

The bill also represents the federal convergence of the KOSA cluster: KOSA and EARN IT impose duty-of-care liability that de facto requires verification; SCREEN imposes verification directly. The cluster’s combined effect is end-state convergence on a nationwide identity-checked internet, whichever bill carries the moment.

Connections

• Mike Lee — sponsor
• Federal Trade Commission — designated enforcement agency
• Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — sibling vehicle in the child-safety legislative cluster
• Section 230 — the bill imports its definitions (“interactive computer service,” “information content provider”) from 47 U.S.C. 230(f)
• Age Verification — operational mechanism the bill mandates
• Fight for the Future — primary opposition coalition organizer
• Electronic Frontier Foundation — opposition / age-verification advocacy
• Bad Internet Bills — coalition campaign that tracks the bill

Source Appearances

• SCREEN Act S737 119th Congress — Bill Text — primary bill text
• Bad Internet Bills — Fight for the Future Campaign Hub — opposition coalition tracker
• The Bill of Rights Ends at the Contractor’s Door — TCN article (draft v2 as of 2026-05-24) citing the bill as the federal-level instance of the vendor workaround pattern

Open Questions

• Does the Senate Commerce Committee take up the bill in the 119th Congress, or does it sit until the next reintroduction cycle?
• Is there a companion House bill in the 119th Congress that has not yet been linked into this entity? (Worth a Congress.gov lookup before the next article cites SCREEN.)
• How does SCREEN interact with the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton line of state-law age-verification litigation already pending in federal court? If SCOTUS sides with the states under intermediate scrutiny, SCREEN’s “least restrictive means” framing inherits that ruling.
• What FTC guidance — if any — has been drafted in anticipation, and which verification vendors are positioned to dominate the contracted-vendor layer if the bill passes?
• Which vendor liability framework, if any, exists in state-law equivalents that could be ported into federal text during markup?