California Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043)
California, United States- Introduced
- Passed House
- Passed Senate
- Became Law
Puts the age check inside the operating system: every device set up in California reports an age bracket to every app.
Latest update
Assembly concurred 69 to 0, sending AB 1856 to Governor Newsom
Current position
Signed; operative Jan 1, 2027
What it does
From January 1, 2027, operating systems must ask for the user's age or birth date during device setup and pass an age-bracket signal to apps. Penalties run to $2,500 per affected child for negligent violations and $7,500 for intentional ones. Apple, Google, and Meta all backed the bill. The follow-up AB 1856 exempts operating systems distributed under open-source licenses. Its original expansion of age signals to browsers and websites was stripped in July; the narrower version passed the Senate 40 to 0 and won Assembly concurrence 69 to 0 in August, sending it to Governor Newsom.
Why it matters
Age verification keeps moving down the stack: first individual websites, then app stores, now the operating system itself. When the device you bought attests your age bracket to every app you open, identity infrastructure ships by default in every phone and laptop sold in the state.
Our take
This is sold as the privacy-friendly option because no ID gets uploaded. What it actually does is normalize the device vouching for who you are, system-wide, forever. Big Tech supported it for a simple reason: they would rather run the checkpoint than stand in line at one.
Timeline
Assembly concurred 69 to 0, sending AB 1856 to Governor Newsom
LatestAB 1856 passed the Senate 40 to 0 with the open-source exemption intact
AB 1856's expansion of age signals to browsers and websites stripped after backlash
AB 1856 passed the Assembly 68 to 1, exempting open-source operating systems
Signed by Governor Newsom
Votes
- Assembly — Final passage (76 to 0) · June 2, 2025
- Senate — Final passage (38 to 0) · September 12, 2025