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Arkansas: No Need To Age Verify Kids Working In Meat Processing Plants, But We Must Age Verify Kids Online

from the priorities,-people dept

As we’ve been covering, there are a slew of laws across the country (and around the globe!) looking to required websites to “age verify” their visitors. And, it seems to be something that has support from all around the political spectrum, as “protect the children” moral panics know no political boundaries.

Just recently Utah passed its age verification (and more) anti-social media bills (which the governor is expected to sign shortly). Ohio has a plan in the works as well. And, of course, here in California, such a bill was signed into law last year, though is now being challenged in court. There are many states working on similar bills as well. Indeed, at this point, it’s more likely than not that a state is exploring such a bill, even as it seems likely to be unconstitutional.

Arkansas is one such state. SB66 is a bill “to create the protection of minors from distribution of harmful material” and “to establish liability for the publication or distribution of material harmful to minors on the internet” and “to require reasonable age verification.” In other words, the same old unconstitutional garbage that (1) has already been rejected by the Supreme Court and (2) is pre-empted under Section 230.

While the whole law is garbage, let’s just focus in on the age verification part. It would require that any commercial entity “shall use a reasonable age verification method before allowing access to a website that contains a substantial portion of material that is harmful to minors.” The bill has a longer definition of what “material harmful to minors” would be, and it includes “nipple of the female breast.” Also the “touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, the anus, or genitals.” Hmm.

Anyway.

In other news… in the very same state of Arkansas, governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed into law a different bill, HB1410, which revised Arkansas labor laws to remove age verification for those under 16. The governor claimed in a statement that the law “was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job.”

This comes less than a month after meat packing company Packers Sanitation Services, which has operations in Arkansas, was fined $1.5 million for illegally employing “at least 102 children to clean 13 meatpacking plants on overnight shifts,” some of whom were… in Arkansas. That company was found to employ kids as young as 13, who had their skin “burned and blistered.”

So, you know, seems like a good time to roll back the laws that try to make sure companies aren’t doing that sort of thing in Arkansas.

But, equally, seems like an odd time to focus on making sure those very same kids, who will no longer have to verify their ages to work such jobs… will have to verify their age to check out any website where they might encounter a female nipple.

Too young to see a nipple, but never too young to be put to labor cleaning a meatpacking plant where you can have your own skin burned and blistered.

The Arkansas way.

Somewhat incredibly, the bills share two cosponsors. Representative Wayne Long and Senator Joshua Bryant want to make sure it’s more difficult for kids to use the internet, but easier to have those kids work dangerous jobs in meatpacking plants.

Seems healthy.

Filed Under: age verification, arkansas, child labor, for the children, harmful content, internet, joshua bryant, nipples, protect the children, sarah huckabee sanders, wayne long