EdLaw nat/us/state/ca/digital-age-assurance/README.md

language: en · status: enacted · last checked: 2026-10-13

California Digital Age Assurance Act (Civ. Code §§1798.500–1798.505, AB 1043)

Enacted, operative 1 January 2027. Title 1.81.9 of Part 4 of Division 3 of the Civil Code, added by AB 1043 (Stats. 2025, ch. 675). Each section's history note reads "Effective January 1, 2026. Operative January 1, 2027, pursuant to Section 1798.505.", and §1798.505 reads "This title shall become operative on January 1, 2027." It makes operating system providers collect a user's birth date or age at account setup and serve an age-bracket signal (under 13, 13–15, 16–17, 18+) to apps, and makes developers request the signal when an app is downloaded and launched and treat it as actual knowledge of the user's age range. AB 1856 (2026) amends it from 1 January 2027, and Adam's Law makes it the first route for a companion chatbot operator's age determination.

Applicability to EdTech

An EdTech app distributed through an app store is a developer's "application" (§1798.500(c)). From 2027 the developer "shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched" (§1798.501(b)(1)), and a developer that receives one "shall be deemed to have actual knowledge of the age range of the user to whom that signal pertains across all platforms of the application and points of access of the application even if the developer willfully disregards the signal" (§1798.501(b)(2)(A)) — which brings in every law keyed to actual knowledge that a user is a child (COPPA, the CCPA's under-16 rule, Adam's Law). Apps downloaded before 2027 and updated on or after 1 January 2026 must request the signal too (§1798.502(b)). The title "does not apply to" "The delivery or use of a physical product" (§1798.504(f)(3)), and a device without an app store is reached only through its operating system provider.

Key obligations at a glance

Enforcement

Injunction and civil penalties of up to $2,500 per affected child for each negligent violation and $7,500 for each intentional one, in an action by the Attorney General; good-faith safe harbour for platforms — §1798.503.

Contents

Document Covers
DIGITAL-AGE-ASSURANCE.md Civ. Code §§1798.500–1798.505 as currently codified, each with its official history note

Licence

The corpus reproduces Cal. Civ. Code §§1798.500–1798.505 verbatim from the California Legislature's own database. Statute text enacted by a state legislature is outside copyright under the government edicts doctrine. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020) (slip opinion, read 2026-10-01), the Supreme Court held: "Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties." The Legislature's XML carries the comment "Copyright © Legislative Counsel Bureau, State of California."; the Bureau is the Legislature's own drafting office, and the same opinion holds that "Because Georgia’s annotations are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties, the government edicts doctrine puts them outside the reach of copyright protection." The bulk-export readme (pubinfo_Readme.pdf, read 2026-10-13) states no copyright notice or terms of use.

Conditions: none attach. The corpus names the official source in Sources and in each section's {.meta} provenance line, and Meta describes what it changed (anchors added, nothing reworded).

Sources