Recorded Webinar—How Age Verification Undermines the First Amendment While Failing Kids

Webinar

Panelists:
Ari Cohn, Free Speech Counsel, TechFreedom
Vera Eidelman, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
Kate Ruane, Director, Center for Democracy and Technology Free Expression Project
David Greene, Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Description:
Won’t someone please think of the children! Many federal and state proposals aim to protect children online, but many of these well-intentioned measures raise significant First Amendment concerns when it comes to age verification. How can we balance child safety with free speech? What are the real-world effects of proposed age-verification measures? How have courts ruled so far and how will future litigation play out? Our panel of experts tackle these questions and more.

Speakers' Biographies

Ari Cohn

Ari is a Free Speech Counsel at TechFreedom. Prior to starting his own practice, Ari spent nearly six years defending free speech at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, where he served as director of its Individual Rights Defense Program. Ari began his career at the Chicago office of Mayer Brown LLP representing clients in complex commercial litigation.

More about speaker

Vera Eidelman

Vera is a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where she works on the rights to free speech and privacy in the digital age. She focuses on the free speech rights of protesters and young people, online speech, and genetic privacy. Before joining the ACLU, she served as a law clerk to the Hon. Beth Labson Freeman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

More about speaker

Kate Ruane

Kate is the Director of CDT’s Free Expression Project. An attorney with a strong background in legal research, Kate is committed to the freedom of speech and to bringing focus to the ways in which strong protections for free expression benefit oft-censored groups. Most recently, Kate served as the Director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, and prior to that as Senior Advisor for the First Amendment and Consumer Privacy at the American Civil Liberties Union for 3 years, and she spent eleven years as a Legislative Attorney for the Congressional Research Service.

More about speaker

David Greene

David is Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director at Electronic Frontier Foundation. He has significant experience litigating First Amendment issues in state and federal trial and appellate courts. David currently serves on the steering committee of the Free Expression Network and the governing committee of the ABA Forum on Communications Law. David is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he teaches classes in First Amendment and media law.

More about speaker