On 26 May 2026, a bipartisan coalition of state and territorial Attorneys General wrote to congressional leadership opposing the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, H.R. 7757 (Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act, H.R. 7757)). The letter was sponsored by the Attorneys General of Connecticut, Hawaii, Ohio and Tennessee. The National Association of Attorneys General puts the coalition at 44 attorneys general and enumerates the joining jurisdictions (Source: naag.org); the New York Attorney General's own release describes James joining 44 other attorneys general, which would make 45 (Source: ag.ny.gov), and secondary coverage has described a 43-AG coalition (Source: iapp.org). The NAAG figure is the one that reconciles with the letter itself: its enumerated list supplies exactly the five jurisdictions — the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Jersey, South Dakota and Utah — absent from the 39 signature blocks that survived text extraction from the letter's final page. It is addressed to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Marsha Blackburn of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie and Ranking Member Frank Pallone. The letter preceded the House's 267–117 passage of the bill on 29 June 2026 by roughly a month.
The preemption objection
The letter's principal argument is structural rather than substantive. The signatories describe the bill as covering "a remarkably broad collection of prominent online policy questions — including online obscenity, online harms to children, social gaming platforms, and artificial intelligence chatbots" — corresponding to Titles I through IV, and state that it "would preempt conflicting state law in each covered domain," citing §§ 106, 221, 237, 244, 304 and 407. They add that although the bill permits limited enforcement by state Attorneys General under § 601(b), it "empowers federal preemption and intervention of such enforcement in all cases" under § 601.
The signatories open by asserting their standing on the underlying harm: they write that state Attorneys General "have commenced litigation to hold accountable some of the largest tech platforms for harming children in our jurisdictions," and that many of their states "have passed landmark legislation addressing the same harms the KIDS Act misleadingly purports to mitigate." They close on the federalism argument directly, writing that "it is too soon to shut down the 'laboratories of democracy'" and that state legislation and enforcement are "the surest route to legal innovation that can approach the speed of technological innovation." See AI Federalism.
The four substantive defects
The letter identifies four provisions it says make the bill inadequate on its own terms:
| Provision | Objection as stated |
|---|---|
| § 213(c)(2) | The Kids Online Safety provisions "expressly disavow any duty of care" |
| § 220 | The subtitle "specifically disclaims any age assurance obligation for covered platforms" |
| § 243(a)(1) | The bill "permits market and product-focused research on minors under the guise of 'privacy, security, transparency, or safety'" |
| § 402(1)(B) | The Artificial Intelligence Chatbots provisions "include a gaping enforcement loophole for AI chat functions that can be construed as 'incidental' to the platform's 'primary purpose'" |
The § 402(1)(B) objection is the letter's only AI-specific criticism. It goes to the scope of Title IV rather than to its conduct rules: a platform whose primary purpose is something other than conversation could argue that a chat function bolted onto it falls outside the title.
The stated alternative
The signatories set the bill against the Kids Online Safety Act, S. 1748, which they say "many State Attorneys General strongly support" (Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA, S. 1748)). They name four features by contrast with H.R. 7757: broad bipartisan sponsorship; preservation of states' authority to enact laws, rules or regulations that similarly protect children; a prohibition on market or product-focused research on children; and "a meaningful duty of care" on online platforms. The letter also states affirmatively that "we appreciate the valuable role federal legislation can play in tech policy," positioning the objection as one to this instrument rather than to federal action.
Provenance
The vault holds the complete letter text, captured from the PDF published by the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, one of the signatory offices. Two capture caveats are recorded in the raw file: the parser returned the opening two paragraphs of page one out of printed order, and the footnote block renders the markers for notes 11 and 12 as bare "Id." entries, so their numerals are reconstructed from the in-text markers. The signature-block transcription is short by five — the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Jersey, South Dakota and Utah — because the final page's two-column layout collapsed during extraction; the count comes from the NAAG release rather than from the transcription, and the one-signatory discrepancy against the New York Attorney General's release is unresolved. Neither H.R. 7757 itself nor S. 1748 is held as a raw source.
Relationships
- contradicts: Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act, H.R. 7757)
- supports: Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA, S. 1748)
- related: AI Federalism
- related: Keith Ellison
- related: AI Companions