On October 18, 2023, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an appeal to overturn a preliminary injunction issued by the US District Court for the Northern District of California last month preventing the implementation of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (“CA AADC”. “). The appeal was submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and marks an important step in evaluating the potential development of the CA AADC.
In a press release, Attorney General Bonta stated “We are filing a notice of appeal today to defend the first-in-the-nation online law for children’s online safety. We believe that the district court’s decision was wrong and that we should be able to protect our children while they are using the internet. Big businesses have no right to our children’s data; childhood experiences are not for sale.
The CA AADC was passed unanimously by the California legislature and signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom on September 15, 2022. The Act is set to go into effect on July 1, 2024. The CA AADC requires covered businesses to comply with a specific set of rules regarding online products, features, and services likely to be accessed by children, defined as any user under the age of 18. This includes obligations such as estimating the age of child users, configuring default privacy settings to the highest level, and completing a data protection impact assessment before any new products, services, or features become available to the public.
The motion for preliminary injunction was filed by NetChoice, a national trade association of major online businesses, in NetChoice v. Bonta.
