Last week, the Senate’s Commerce Committee held an executive session on five kids’ online safety bills, four of which did pass. SCREEN (Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net) —which Rep. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced to require sites hosting sexually explicit material to identify and block minors— didn’t have enough senators present. It got a roll call vote with 15 in favor and 13 against, not surprisingly splitting straight down party lines.
The Screen Act Requires a Re-Vote
“Our first bill, the SCREEN Act, introduced by Senator Lee with Senators Banks and Curtis, would protect children from explicit pornography by requiring such websites to identify and block access to minors,” noted Sen. Ted Cruz, the committee’s chairman, in remarks prepared for delivery via the Senate Commerce Committee.
But Senate rules require a majority of the committee to be physically present to vote. So many members were absent that a revote will be necessary “to comport with Senate rules on in-person attendance.”
As Wet Ink has covered, age verification efforts have rapidly increased since Trump’s re-election. The Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, upheld Texas’s age-verification law, giving GOP lawmakers encouragement to continue to regulate content it doesn’t like. Cruz even cited the ruling directly when introducing the bill last week.
Roughly half of US states now require some form of age check for adult content, and the fight for more continues in Washington. The party-line 15-13 split matters as much as the quorum failure: a bill that only Republicans support has a much harder path through the full Senate.
What Is the SCREEN Act?
The Screen act aims to restrict free expression and privacy online with a sweeping approach that contains no content threshold. So unlike state laws that require a significant portion of a site to be adult-focused, Lee’s SCREEN Act applies to nearly any platform hosting even a single qualifying item.
It also features a ban on simple attestation: users cannot just type in their birthdate or check a box; platforms must use active technology verification measures as well IP and VPN checks including for virtual private network (VPN) locations—to determine if users are of age and in the U.S.
Age Verification Already Passed via The KIDS Act
A near-identical House bill already did pass, though. Folded into the KIDS Act, these restrictions cleared the House 267-117 last month. Indeed, age-verification initiatives are very much alive in House-Senate conferences even while this Senate bill is stalled.
Conservative figures are definitely making their views known on the issue in dramatic fashion that seeks to divide the government. “The porn industry is preying on America’s children for profit, and now it is doing it with the support of Democrat lawmakers,” posted Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project on X. “The 13 Senate Democrats who voted against the SCREEN Act today made it perfectly clear: they would rather stand with Big Porn than American parents and children.”
Meanwhile the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the bill, is pointing to how it might affect everyone on the internet, not just adult entertainment: it would reach nearly any service hosting even a single piece of sexually explicit content, not just porn sites.
“Age-gate the internet and block young people from speaking and accessing lawful speech online. Or else,” India McKinney, an EFF rep, said, describing the message the bill package sends about regulating expression on the web.
