The GUARD Act seeks to create an identity verification and surveillance regime for artificial intelligence. Beyond creating unconstitutional roadblocks, the bill mandates constant reverification of identity, posing a massive security and privacy risk to every American.
NetChoice Letter of Opposition to Unconstitutional Censorship of American AI Systems: GUARD Act
April 23, 2026
Senate Judiciary Committee
On behalf of NetChoice, a trade association working to make the Internet safe for free enterprise and free expression, we write to raise our opposition to the GUARD Act. While intended to improve child safety, the bill represents yet another direct assault on the First Amendment rights of every American citizen. Far beyond “just” an unconstitutional Chinese-style identity verification scheme, this bill is also a wholesale ban on AI use for under-18’s, a censorious speech ban related to legal, medical, financial and psychological advice, and a data privacy and security nightmare. The legislation takes the vague potential for harm and places on top of it some of the most hamfisted, self-defeating legal regimes thus far dreamed up by lawmakers in the United States.
Identity verification has functioned now for almost half a decade as the attempted cure-all for any sort of perceived online harm. Operating systems, devices, app stores, social media platforms and now AI chatbots have attracted the false solution of identity verification. Little time, it seems, is spent considering if such a regime would actually cure any of the social ills it claims to address. Countless courts have now blocked or completely struck down age verification schemes regarding minors’ access to lawful content, and a ban on AI technology would fare no differently. So then, whose life is improved by a bill with no future? What child is made safer by the passage of a bill destined to be struck down? An unconstitutional bill protects no one.
A Violation of Privacy and Cybersecurity
When age verification proposals and speech bans are offered up, they tend to be proposed by those who have a genuine interest in protecting the privacy of children online. This is unfortunately ironic, as age verification mandates present a clear and present danger to the safety of young people on the internet.
Age verification mandates require that sensitive, personal information of every American internet user be handed over to various platforms to be stored long-term. This creates a massive honeypot of personally identifiable information of adults, but also of millions of children. Scammers, predators and other criminals go to great lengths to secure access to this type of information to take advantage of or prey on kids. Federally mandating the centralization of this data would be a horrible and potentially ruinous mistake for the lives of the nation’s youth.
More offensive is that the GUARD Act is not simply a verification regime for AI, but it imposes a CCP-style system of constant identity surveillance. The bill mandates regular re-verification of every user’s identity, which means parents will have to consistently upload theirs and their children’s personal data to be stored by platforms and sifted through by government bureaucrats. Every time that identifying information is scraped and saved the chances of that information being stolen goes up. Yes, the bill technically requires that user data used for identity verification only be held for a finite period of time, but that concession is undermined by the infinite number of times the GUARD Act mandates data harvesting. Hackers, predators and other criminals will have seemingly endless opportunities to steal a parent or their child’s information thanks to this bill.
Instructive to this effort is the recent rollout of the European Union’s age verification app, developed to support their own surveillance efforts. After launch, it took security experts all of two minutes to hack the system and discover the app left users’ data at risk. Countless other recent examples show “trusted” age verification services being hacked. Supporting legislation like the GUARD Act essentially requires acceptance that American citizens will have their personal information stolen and used against them by criminals.
The First Amendment Rejects Age Verification and Speech Bans
Young people possess First Amendment rights under the constitution. This has been repeatedly affirmed, including in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), a landmark ruling by Justice Antonin Scalia. AI, social media and other bans related to lawful content then are straightforwardly violative of the First Amendment and would be swiftly struck down if challenged.
Age verification, while largely unconstitutional, has recently been ruled to be acceptable in limited cases regarding illegal content. In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (2025), the court ruled that the government’s interest in preventing minors from consuming pornography justified limited age verification requirements. This was a narrow ruling, as pornography is already illegal for minors, and the age verification requirements fell on the pornography platforms themselves. The GUARD Act is different, as it seeks to apply a broad age verification regime across the internet, and block minors’ access to fully protected content.
NetChoice has extensive experience bringing lawsuits against similar provisions at the state level. We have managed to permanently enjoin age verification laws in Ohio, Arkansas and, most recently, Louisiana. We have acquired preliminary injunctions against similar laws in many other states.
As AI becomes more and more integrated into the services of even the smallest, non-tech businesses, the GUARD Act presents a real threat that its age verification regime will begin appearing across most websites, platforms and apps. If a fast food restaurant or the website of an airline provides a chat feature to place orders or sort customer service requests, then Americans of all ages will be forced to surrender their information in order to access those sites, even if they don’t intend to use the AI-enabled features at all.
Content-Based Restrictions Violate the Constitution
Identity verification is not the only way in which the GUARD Act violates the constitutional rights of every American. Even if a company could avoid the forced surveillance regime, the bill still places legal and financial penalties related to the expressiveness of an AI product, not any actual unlawful activity. Liability attaches based on an AI technology’s tone, style and perceived emotional connection. Not to mention the attempted ban on entire categories of lawful speech. This is a straightforward content-based regulation, more commonly understood as censorship.
Disrespect for Parental Authority
One need not be a constitutional scholar or a cybersecurity expert to understand the problem with the GUARD Act. Proponents may see the legislation as a means to empower parents, but in actuality, GUARD is a clear example of the federal government trampling upon the traditional authority of parents over their children. The bill’s bans, mandates and restrictions supplement the judgment of parents for the dominance of the government. While certain families may desire to restrict their children’s access to AI technologies, other families may not feel the same. Simply put, parents deserve the right to make those decisions for themselves, not have those choices stolen from them by the government.
Conclusion
NetChoice shares the goal of the legislation and its sponsors: to protect children from harmful content online. But the nobility of the goal does not negate the breadth of the First Amendment or the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, this bill only seeks to guard the government’s ability to censor and restrict. Censorship is not child safety, and an unconstitutional bill protects no one. We stand ready to work together with all of you to help improve safety outcomes for America’s children, and we appreciate your attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
Zachary Lilly
Director of Government Affairs
NetChoice
NetChoice is a trade association that works to make the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression.
Image via Unsplash.