Bill Filed to Protect Physical Privacy in Shelters, State Buildings, Jails

Legislation,

On Monday, lawmakers filed legislation protecting people’s physical privacy and safety in certain shelters, in state and local jails, and in public buildings.

The measure is similar to a law Arkansas passed in 2023 to protect privacy in public schools and on overnight school trips.

S.B. 486 by Sen. Blake Johnson (R — Corning) and Rep. Mary Bentley (R — Perryville) protects physical privacy and safety of Arkansans in showers, locker rooms, changing rooms, restrooms, and sleeping quarters in government buildings and in state and local jails.

The bill also applies to changing rooms, restrooms, and sleeping quarters in shelters for victims of domestic violence.

S.B. 486 would require these facilities to be designated for “male” or “female” use. The bill generally requires people to use the facility that corresponds to their biological sex.

Over the years, we have seen efforts to house men with women in jails, let men stay in women’s shelters, and give men access to women’s changing areas, locker rooms, showers, and restrooms.

S.B. 486 is common sense legislation narrowly tailored to protect physical privacy and safety in public buildings and shelters in Arkansas.

You Can Read The Bill Here.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Montana Legislature Debates Bill Similar to One Arkansas Passed in 2023

LGBT, ,

Recently Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Sara Beth Nolan spoke to the Montana House Judiciary Committee in support of a bill that requires schools, prisons, domestic violence shelters, and other included facilities to designate spaces like locker rooms, restrooms, and sleeping quarters as either males or females.

The bill is similar to a measure Arkansas passed in 2023.

Act 317 by Rep. Mary Bentley (R – Perryville) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R – Jonesboro) protects privacy in public school locker rooms, showers, restrooms, changing areas, and similar facilities. The law requires public schools to designate these facilities for “male” or “female” use. It also addresses sleeping accommodations for students on overnight school trips — something that has been a serious problem for students in other states.

Laws like these are necessary to protect students from federal policy changes that seem to come with each election cycle.

In 2016 the Obama Administration issued federal “guidelines” directing every public school in America — including schools in Arkansas — to let biological males use girls’ locker rooms, showers, bathrooms, and similar facilities at school. The Trump Administration rescinded those federal policies in 2018, which gave schools a brief reprieve, but the Biden Administration moved to reinstate the policies shortly after the 2020 election.

Since his inauguration last week, President Trump has issued a series of executive orders addressing issues like this one, but a future president could repeal those executive orders.

State laws can help clarify how public schools protect student privacy in the face of changing federal policy.

You can watch ADF’s committee testimony below.

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Federal Government Sues TikTok Over Alleged Child Privacy Violations

Social Media, , ,

On Friday the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against social media giant TikTok and its parent company for allegedly violating federal laws intended to protect children online.

TikTok boasts approximately one billion users worldwide — including 135 million or more in the U.S. — making it one of the most popular social media platforms on earth.

However, TikTok and its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, have come under fire for serving kids a steady “diet of darkness” online and struggling to protect private user data from entities in China, such as the Chinese Communist Party.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged that TikTok and ByteDance violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 — a federal law that helps protect children from being tracked online.

The lawsuit accuses TikTok of “unlawful massive-scale invasions of children’s privacy,” saying,

TikTok collects, stores, and processes vast amounts of data from its users, who include millions of American children younger than 13. . . . For years, Defendants [TikTok and ByteDance] have knowingly allowed children under 13 to create and use TikTok accounts without their parents’ knowledge or consent, have collected extensive data from those children, and have failed to comply with parents’ requests to delete their children’s accounts and personal information.

This is not the first lawsuit TikTok has faced for failing to protect children on its platform.

Last year Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin filed two lawsuits against the tech giant — one in Cleburne County and another in Union County — for violating the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and failing to protect children.

The lawsuits allege that TikTok and ByteDance failed to fully disclose that the company is subject to Chinese laws that mandate cooperation with intelligence activities of the People’s Republic of China, and that TikTok’s algorithm deliberately promotes “intensely sexualized” content — including content that sexualizes children. The A.G.’s legal team has pointed out that objectionable content is even available to users who enable TikTok’s content filtering in the app, and that TikTok aggressively collects sensitive user data.

Social media platforms are more than just websites or phone apps. These are multimillion dollar businesses owned and operated by investors and other interests. The adults who own these companies have a responsibility to follow state and federal laws and to protect children on their platforms.

As we have said before, there’s more and more evidence that social media platforms like TikTok put users’ personal information at risk and are actually designed to push objectionable content to users.

With that in mind, it’s good to see the Department of Justice taking legal action to fight back against these tech companies and protect our children online.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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