Voters Support Tech Regulations at the State Level, but Want Federal Action

Most voters, including nearly 2 in 3 Democrats and more than half of independents, believe the federal government is more responsible for passing legislation related to the tech industry. A slim majority of Republicans, meanwhile, believe that states hold more responsibility for regulating the sector.

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the former chief executive of Nimble Technology Inc. and a vice president of Microsoft Corp., said she recognizes the need for federal legislation “to make sure we have consistent policy across the country so people know what their rights are.” She also noted the unique challenge that implementing legislation at the federal level presents when it comes to the tech industry and the massive amount of data on which many companies rely. 

“It’s different from other regulations where you have a federal standard that is a baseline and states can build on top of it. This isn’t quite so linear,” she said, raising questions about what data is collected, stored, protected and when consent is required. “All of these things make it much more complicated, and in the absence of a federal standard, we end up with these different state laws that create a patchwork that becomes untenable for consumers to know what their rights are and for businesses to abide by them.”

Tech legislation moves quickly through statehouses — but legal challenges can follow

One of the appeals of legislating from the state level is the speed at which the legislatures can move compared to Congress. Voters in both parties have a desire to see additional regulations in place for the tech industry, and state houses allow for those laws to go into effect sooner than waiting for a federal standard to be established. 

That speed is not necessarily a good thing, warns Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel at tech trade organization NetChoice. 

“In a state, a bad idea can become law in as little as a week,” he said. “While that does give a lot of opportunity for good ideas to be experimented with, simultaneously it can often have well-intentioned legislation result in a myriad of unintended consequences.”

He also noted that regulating internet companies is “inherently an interstate issue. A law passed in one state will impact its neighboring states and even the states all across the country.” 

At the state level, tech regulations tend to find bipartisan support among lawmakers. But they are still far more likely to pass when one party controls a supermajority within the statehouse, holding both houses of the legislature and the governorship. 

States with a trifecta of Republican control have produced some of the more controversial tech legislation. In 2021, Florida passed a law that prohibited social media platforms from suspending the accounts of state political candidates. Later that year, Texas passed its own social media restrictions preventing platforms from removing content based on the political viewpoint of the user. 

Both may ultimately end up in front of the Supreme Court due to legal challenges. Earlier this year, Republican-controlled Utah passed a law that requires social media platforms to verify the age of users living in the state and restrict access to the platforms for anyone under the age of 18 during mandatory curfew hours. The restrictive law is expected to face pushback. 

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