Alaska Legislature: House Judiciary, 4/22/26, 1pm

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] This meeting of the House Judiciary Committee will now come to order. The time is now 1:00 PM on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. We are meeting in the Gruenberg Room, Capitol Room 120. The following The following members are present: Representative Costello, Representative Vance— sorry— and myself, Representative Gray, Chair. Let the record reflect that we do not have a quorum to conduct business.

I would like to recognize the staff supporting this meeting: Sophia Tenney from House Records, Kyla Tupou from Juneau LIO, and my committee aide, Dylan Hitchcock Lopez. We have 2 items of business on today's agenda. Senate Bill 167, Criminal Conviction Overturned, Received Past PFD. By Senator Kawasaki, and HB 318, Social Media Minors, by Representative Elam. We will go at ease.

Reflect that we were joined by Representative Mena and Representative Aishide at 1:01 PM. Our first item of business is Senate Bill 167, Criminal Conviction Overturn, Received, Passed PFD, for its first hearing in our committee. I also will state for the record that we now have a quorum to conduct business. I would like to invite the sponsor's staff, Matty Hull, to the witness table.

Mr. Hull, you can begin with your opening remarks.

Through the chair to Representative Gray, this is Matty Hull for the records staff to Senator Scott Kawasaki. I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to present SB 167, and thank you for hearing our House companion by Representative Mears, HB 189. Um, SB 167 is an act relating to the eligibility of criminal offenders for certain benefits, including the Permanent Fund Dividend. Um, uh, our community in Fairbanks has been affected notably with the Fairbanks Four, with folks that have been wrongfully convicted, and this bill aims to seek to return what is their personal property. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hall. It is my intent to adopt a committee substitute for Senate Bill 167. Do we have a motion? Mr. Chair, I move that the committee substitute for Senate Bill 167, Work Order 34-LS0491/G, be adopted as the committee's working document.

I will object for the purpose of discussion. I would like to now call on my committee aide, Dylan Hitchcock Lopez, to come forward, put yourself on the record, and walk us through the changes made to the committee substitute.

Good afternoon, House Judiciary Committee. Dylan Hitchcock Lopez, committee aide. As the committee— through the chair— as the committee may recall, we had a couple of hearings on the House companion to this piece of legislation. We— the committee substitute that is now before us conforms the Senate bill to make it identical to the House bill that was under consideration by this committee. Specifically, that removes Sections 1, 4, 5, and 6 from the previous Senate bill version.

Sections 1, 2, and 3 are— Section 1 is substantially similar to Section 2 of the previous version. It restores PFD eligibility for individuals whose convictions were vacated or reversed. It establishes application procedures for claiming past PFDs, and it adds that a prior transfer to the restorative justice account does not disqualify an otherwise eligible individual from receiving those past PFDs. Again, this is the precise language that this committee has already considered in the companion bill. And then sections 2 and 3 of the committee substitute are just renumbered to conform to the deletions.

If there's any questions, happy to answer them. Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock Lopez. Are there any questions? Representative Costello. Thank you.

So on the, um, review of the changes for the Section 1 where it talks about— adds that a prior transfer to the restorative justice account does not disqualify an otherwise eligible individual. So, um, it— when you say transfer to the restorative justice account, is that the account where the Violent Crimes Compensation Board and the Victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault funding comes from that account. Through the chair, yes, I believe that that is a source of funding for, for those programs, and, and I think a few other programs as well, um, are funded through the restorative justice account. So the purpose of this, which again, this language is from the House companion version, I believe that language was vetted in the State Affairs Committee before it came to this committee. And so the idea being that, you know, when Under current law, when an individual is incarcerated and not eligible to receive a PFD, an amount equal to the PFD that they would receive is deposited into the restorative justice account and then used for those various programs.

The purpose of this language is to clarify that, you know, that transfer would still occur if a person's conviction should become, you know, vacated on appeal, and under this bill, they are therefore entitled to receive their PFDs. They're not disqualified. Just because that prior transfer happened. It doesn't invalidate that transfer. That transfer still would have occurred to the Restorative Justice account.

It doesn't take anything away from the Restorative Justice account. It just ensures that this person who has not received any money for their past PFDs, now that they have been found to have been either wrongfully convicted or their conviction has been, you know, legally overturned, they're now eligible to receive that money, and it's independent. Thank you. And I do understand that. My focus is on— when I looked at the statute, It actually listed out the violent— that the dividend for those who had to have it relinquished goes into specifically the Violent Crimes Compensation Board and the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Program.

And so my question is, when we say the restorative justice account, I'm not sure the statute— I want to make sure that we're not going to be deviating from the statute because it sounds like the restorative justice account pays for other things. And I just want to clarify that. And I could have been looking at a previous version of the statutes, but I'm not. I think I was looking at a current version. And through the chair to Representative Casella, and this may be— we may want to get the sponsor up here for this one because this is, you know, maybe more appropriate to the sponsor.

But I do believe that the intent of it is certainly not to preclude anything under the restorative justice account or related accounts. And I believe if we look at page 2, line 9 of the committee substitute, it specifically defines the restorative justice account as being under AS4323-048 subsection A. And so again, we could— I have not specifically traced that back to ensure that all the accounts are covered. I believe that was the sponsor's intent, but I would defer to the sponsor on that. Mr. Hall.

If I can clarify. Sure. Representative Costello. Thank you. And so just to clarify what I'm asking, it's fine if the restorative justice account funds other things, but I want to make sure that these dividends, if the statute only calls out these two programs, that it's these two programs that those dividends are funding.

Or I could be incorrect, and maybe, maybe we've changed the statute to list more programs, but I just want to make sure that we're not expanding the intention of the statute the way it currently talks about how these dividends are used. Mr. Hall, through the chair to Representative Costello, to my knowledge, uh, Based off of the guidance from Ledge Legal, the language on our House Companion on HB 189 regarding the restorative justice account was all-inclusive, to my best knowledge. However, that might be best—. I could try to follow up on that specific question.

Well, yeah, I mean, All-inclusive, meaning these two programs or other programs? Because the statute that I read said that these are the two that we fund, so if we're putting it into an account that funds other things, then we might have to go change the statute for where it talks about these dividends and what they're used for. Thank you. So let me see if I understand. What you're understanding, you don't want these people to be disqualified from receiving their PFD if their PFD was filed on their behalf by DOC and it went to someplace else other than the restorative justice account?

I'm not worried about that because I think the bill actually handles that. Okay. What I'm concerned about is that, um, that this restorative justice account— what, what's funded out of that?

Um, thank you. Um, does anyone know what the restorative justice account funds? Well, through the chair and We may need to get Ledge Legal specifically on for this, but I will say one thing, Representative Casella, that may address this. This committee substitute and this bill doesn't change anything. It doesn't amend the restorative justice account or accounts or any of those funds statutes.

It specifically— this specifically cross-references for purposes of PFD eligibility, but I think we can rest assured that this bill doesn't have any implication on those accounts and how they're structured and where the money goes. So I do feel confident in that assessment given the way that this piece of legislation is structured. [Speaker:THE_PRESS] Can I take an adieu? [Speaker:MR_EARNEST] Yes. Adieu.

The record reflect that we were joined by Representative Underwood at 1:11 PM. And, um, Mr. Hitchcock Lopez, if you could please clarify what is funded by the restorative justice account per statute. All right. So Dylan Hitchcock Lopez, for the record, staff to Rep. Gray and the committee. So, again, the bill speaks to the restorative justice account under AS 4323-048A.

If we look at Alaska Statute 4323-048, which defines restorative justice account, we see that the restorative justice account is created as a separate account in the dividend fund. The statute provides that the commissioner shall transfer from the dividend fund to the restorative justice account each fiscal year an amount equal to the amount that would have been paid during the previous fiscal year to individuals who were ineligible to receive dividends under AS 4323-005(d) if they had been eligible. Section B provides the places where the legislature may appropriate amounts from the account. So the places that the legislature may appropriate accounts— appropriate amounts from the account to the following recipients in the priority order and percentages listed: 1, 10 to 13% to the Crime Victims Compensation Fund. 2, 2 To 6% to the Office of Victims' Rights for payments to crime victims; 3, 1 to 3% to nonprofit organizations to provide grants for services for crime victims and domestic violence and sexual assault programs; 4, 1 to 3% to nonprofit organizations to provide grants for mental health services and substance abuse treatment for offenders; and 5, 79 to 88% to the Department of Corrections for costs related to incarceration or probation.

And I believe that that specifies the exclusive and exhaustive source. Okay. That's great. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions about this CS?

Seeing no further questions about the CS, I remove my objection.

Seeing no objection, the Committee Substitute for SB 167 Work Order 34-LS0491/G, as in golf, has been adopted as the committee's working document.

Are there any questions or comments from the committee on SB 167?

Seeing no further questions or comments, do we have a motion? Mr. Chair, at this time I move that Senate Bill 167, Work Order 34-LS0491/G, be reported out of the House Judiciary Committee with individual individual recommendations and attached fiscal note. Hearing no objections, Senate Bill 167, Work Order 34-LS0491/G, as in golf, is reported out of the House Judiciary Committee with individual recommendations and attached fiscal note. I authorize Legislative Legal Services to make any necessary technical and conforming changes.

We will take a brief at ease to sign the paperwork. At ease.

Our next item of business is to bring up House Bill 318, Social Media Minors, for public testimony. At this time, I would like to invite the sponsor, Representative Elam, and his staff, Kendra Broussard, to the witness table. Representative Elam, would you like to make some comments before we open up public testimony?

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, for, for hearing House Bill 318 again. Um, you know, I don't, I don't have a lot to add. I know we had a lot of robust conversation, uh, the last time, and I really appreciate the, the committee here hearing, hearing the comments and, and everything. I will say that, you know, there, there's a number of, of letters and emails and, and things that have come in from the big tech companies.

I can't say that I'm surprised. I was expecting to see some of those. What I would say that you haven't heard from them are the court cases they're losing, and this type of material always winds up in some kind of a court case. And so this is an opportunity for us to be able to assist and provide some support for the, the, the children, for the parents, for our communities just at large here across the state of Alaska to have a voice in saying this is how we want, uh, lanes on the road to be whenever we're talking about our children and, and online activities. Um, so thank you for hearing it again.

Thank you so much, uh, Representative Elam. Um, we will open up public testimony on 318 right now. Is there anyone in the room that would like to testify?

Seeing no one, we will go online. We will go first to Audun Downey out of Reno, Nevada. If you can take yourself off mute and begin your testimony.

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee. My name is Aidan Downey, representing the Computer and Communications Industry Association in opposition to House Bill 318. All our member companies have a long history of developing parental tools to tailor online experiences to the developmental needs of younger users. This specific legislation introduces significant constitutional and operational concerns that would negatively impact Alaskans. House Bill 318 requires businesses to submit annual reports to the Attorney General describing internal assessments regarding the well-being of minors, which likely violates the First Amendment.

Federal courts have held that such mandatory disclosures constitute compelled speech, as they force companies to create and disclose highly subjective opinions about content-related harms. These requirements fall short of strict constitutional scrutiny because they represent state attempts to indirectly censor online material by delegating controversial editorial questions to the companies themselves. The unconstitutional issues the bills These requirements undermine the privacy of all Alaskan users. To comply with age verification, services must be forced to collect sensitive personal information such as government IDs or biometrics, which makes these platforms prime targets for identity theft and cyberattacks. Some of the most devastating data breaches in recent years are directly attributable to these types of age verification requirements.

Furthermore, the bill's restriction on notifications between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM effectively mandates location-based tracking of minors' devices. This creates a surveillance apparatus that tracks when it's nighttime in a given device's location, undermining the privacy of the very kids the bill intends to protect. The bill also relies on terms like addictive design features that lack an adequate scientific foundation. Additionally, the bill's standards are dangerously vague. It determines responsibilities based on whether a controller reasonably should know a user is a minor, which is a subjective standard that risks being applied arbitrarily.

Because the bill also allows the Attorney General to ban any other feature they determine encourages compulsive use without defining that term, Government entities will have no way of knowing what corrective measures they must take to remain in compliance with the law. We look forward to continued conversations about the legislation, and thank you for your consideration of these comments. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Downey. I apologize for mispronouncing your first name, Aidan. We'll move to Zach Lilly, calling in from Washington, D.C. Mr. Lilly, if you will take yourself off mute and begin your testimony.

Great, thank you. And you absolutely nailed the pronunciation of my name, so I appreciate it. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, my name is Zach Lilly, and I'm the Director of Government Affairs at NetChoice. We're a trade association of leading American internet businesses dedicated to free enterprise and free expression online.

We are concerned with HB 318 as the bill misunderstands the distinction between conduct and content for expression-based online platforms. From a First Amendment perspective, social media platforms or other conduits of speech are more akin to newspapers than to other commercial products. As such, you cannot divide the conduct and the content for the purposes of regulation. That's because the speech itself is the draw for consumers and ultimately what lawmakers across the country tend to take issue with. Just like the legislature cannot regulate how a newspaper organizes or distributes its content, Neither can it do so for social media.

California has attempted similar legislation, which is currently being litigated across multiple different lawsuits. HB 318 would also force the establishment of government coerced identity surveillance across the covered platforms, since it requires platforms offer a different version of its services to users it, quote unquote, "should know are minors." NetChoice itself has litigated multiple suits that have prevented these bills from going into effect across the country. And courts have fully struck down age verification in Arkansas, Ohio, and Louisiana. While the Supreme Court has upheld limited age verification specifically for pornography, the same is not true for lawful content on social media platforms. Finally, the bill hands the AG sweeping authority to determine what is and is not addictive for the purposes of censoring platform speech.

This is an incredibly dangerous precedent. While the bill would violate the First Amendment rights of Alaskans regardless, handing so much open-ended power to the Attorney General all but clarifies how overbroad this proposed regulation would be. This bill sets the dangerous precedent that all the government has to do is label speech as addictive so that it can be regulated. This will be easily weaponized, and the path from well-intentioned safety to censorship is a short one. Metro respectfully opposes HB 318 and would be happy to be a resource as you consider these complex First Amendment and privacy issues further.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Ollie. Seeing no one else online or in the room to testify, public testimony on House Bill 318 is now closed.

I would now like to set an amendment deadline on House Bill 318 for Wednesday, April 29th, 2026, at 11:50 5:59 PM. Please work with my committee aide to ensure that amendments are submitted on time before we put the bill aside. Um, Representative Elam, do you have any comments?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, you know, I just find it interesting that it— that, you know, everybody's very focused on First Amendment, but nobody's really talking about the actual content, which is addictive algorithms. Doom scrolling and talking are two very different worlds. Doomscrolling and, uh, all the random notifications and stuff that, that interrupt classrooms, that interrupt our, our family time at the dinner table, that parents don't have any kind of controls over it— this doesn't violate their constitutional rights.

It actually goes around the, the First Amendment in, in many directions that tries to put some good safeguards on there. So I'm definitely open to conversation, but I do find that The microdosing of dopamine that's happening on social media platforms is not the part that we're talking about here. And that's really what the bill is about. Thank you. Thank you, Representative.

Any questions or comments from committee before we put this bill away for a little while? Representative Mina. Thank you, Chair Gray. Through the chair, I have a question about how this bill compares with the Kids Online Safety Act.

It complements it. You know, to get in and do kind of a deep dive comparison between the two, I'd have to spend some time working on. I really was focused on Alaska state statute and the Alaska state constitution, trying to make sure that it aligned appropriately with our laws and rules and previous litigation here. But it does complement a lot of the work that's being done nationally. A follow-up.

Through the chair, are there specific differences that are in this bill? From the federal COSA? I'd have to spend some time validating, um, before I jumped out on a limb and said which one it did or didn't do. Thank you. Another follow-up, uh, through the chair.

I know last hearing that we had on this bill, we talked a little bit about the role of age verification in this bill, even though it's not explicitly stated, that the companies would have to figure out a mechanism to identify a known minor. So Have you been able to have— give some thought as to how that would be implemented? Yes, through the Chair.

Yes, I reached out to the Department of Law, and we had a really good conversation, and it does sound like there might be some opportunities to clean up some of the language. There's maybe a little bit of duplicative stuff that we could potentially work on. But really, at the end of the day, the way that this is set up is that it holds full liability with the social media platforms, and then it gives the Attorney General the ability to hold them accountable and ask them, how did you verify and validate age? How did you, uh, make sure that there were reasonable measures put in place to, uh, identify minors? So there's really not a whole ton that the Attorney General will have to do.

One last follow-up, uh, through the chair. I know that there is a bit of discussion about the role of the Attorney General and trying to balance between those First Amendment rights and also our state constitution's right to privacy. Um, I'm trying to figure out how to address this issue where it seems like the AG does have a lot of power in terms of determining what is an addictive addictive feature. Is there some way to help provide more clarity to what that means, or to ensure that we have more guidance about what that addictive feature is so that it's not just unilaterally in that position of, of the AG? And what I'm thinking about is, you know, do we need to include Commerce or a different department?

To just help, or even the Department of Health, but it is a new terminology in statute, and I think it could be interpreted broadly. Through the chair, um, I have actually given that quite a bit of thought, and one of the challenges that you run into whenever you're doing, um, this type of legislation is we're having to define certain things like social media, addictive behaviors, Some of those kinds of things, and when you write policy, I have a technology background, when you write policy for technology, you have to be careful not to be too prescriptive, or you wind up with terms like pager in state statute that has to get changed later on, and nobody carries a pager anymore, we all carry cell phones, and so the report that the Department of Law and that the Attorney General will have to give to the legislature annually, will give us the insight to know when we need to be doing maintenance on our statutes. So I think that this is just kind of the first step in sort of the, the process of saying, how do we want to regulate this? How do we want to manage this?

Just one follow-up through the chair. I guess I'm trying to think if there's any counterweight or some sort of accountability on the AG's office in terms of the interpretation of addictive design features. And I understand that, you know, Department of Law has a lot of positions where they, they work on consumer protection, etc., but it just seems like it's a new realm, particularly because our state is quite behind on trying to regulate AI and other technology. And I just wonder if that's the best stakeholder to make that decision of what is an addictive design. Through the chair, I mean, that's a very valid conversation.

If you want, you know, we could maybe see if we can brainstorm some ideas. You know, I'm happy to put in some kind of amendment for, you know, whenever we next meet. And come up with some ideas. I think that really what we're seeing nationally is very similar, and it is kind of in the AG's realm as far as how other states and, you know, folks have been working through this. So I don't know.

I mean, I guess we could do something like that. I'm open to the idea or suggestion. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

Okay, so just a reminder, the amendment deadline for House Bill 318 is Wednesday, April 29th, at 11:59 PM. We will now set House Bill 318 aside and bring it back up at a later date. That concludes today's business before the committee. Before we adjourn, here is a preview of our next meeting. On Friday, we are going to be bringing back HB 367, Consumer Data Data Privacy Act for its second hearing.

Please note that my office circulated a committee substitute for House Bill 367 last week, which we will be discussing on Friday. It is also my intent to bring back SB 9, Surrender of Infants, Infant Safety Device, up under bills previously heard. As a reminder, the amendment deadline for that bill is tomorrow, Thursday, April 23rd at 5 PM. The time is now 1:33 PM, and this hearing of the House Judiciary Committee is adjourned.