A group of Republican lawmakers from six states voiced their dismay and displeasure with a measure in Congress that would condition federal money on US states pausing enforcement of state AI regulations for 10 years, saying it would endanger their constituents, harm innovation and violate the states' constitutional powers under the 10th Amendment.
Irate Republican lawmakers from Montana to South Carolina blasted a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation today, saying it would harm consumers, particularly children, as well as slow innovation and violate the US Constitution’s delegation of power to the states.While the decade-long moratorium in the White House’s proposed “Big Beautiful Bill” is being presented in Congress as a prerequisite to qualify for AI funding, lawmakers from states in the South, West and Midwest said at a press conference today that it would effectively ban state regulation and enforcement of AI due to the importance of federal money in state budgets.
The inability of federal lawmakers to pass comprehensive privacy legislation and update nearly three-decade-old Internet laws such as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is evidence that Congress is not up to the task of being the sole US rule maker on a fast-evolving technology like artificial intelligence, the state senators and representatives said.
“We've got an army standing up and saying, ‘Look, this is wrong. These are the possible ramifications.’ And my question to Congress would be, would you make a blind decision that's going to lock your family into not being able to make that change for 10 years?” said state Senator Brandon Guffey of South Carolina. “They are putting the citizens at risk. I think this will be the biggest mistake since Section 230 when it comes to protecting children online, and they're going to be left with it, and children will die, just simply because [state lawmakers] can't react in order to force tech companies to put children first.”
Guffey, who sponsored Gavin’s Law — which outlaws online sexual extortion in South Carolina — in the wake of his 17-year-old son's suicide after facing extortion demands on Instagram, chairs the South Carolina legislature’s AI regulatory committee. He said the states are much better positioned to respond quickly to protect young people online.
Congress “had 29 years to protect children online, and we see it's not a priority,” he said, referring to the time since the passage of Section 230, which provides broad immunity to online platforms for user-posted content.
While the GOP lawmakers said they have supported the Trump Administration’s move to push more legal authority to the states and downsize the role of the federal government, they said they have been dismayed by the proposed AI moratorium, which they said would do the opposite.
In particular, they said, the proposal violates the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which says that legal powers not specifically allocated to the federal government devolve to the states and the people.
“A federal AI moratorium might play in DC, but out West, we believe in innovation, not hesitation,” said state Senator Heidi Balderree of Utah. “The 10th Amendment wasn't written to keep us stuck; it was written to keep us free. There's an analogy: it says that AI is developing like a dam that's about to burst. A moratorium isn't a reinforcement. It's like turning your back on the water and hoping that it holds.”
And state Senator Louis Blessing of Ohio, chair of the state Senate Ways and Means committee, said he believes the moratorium originates with the tech industry, not the White House or lawmakers. “They simply do not want to be regulated. Full stop,” Blessing said.
The proposed pause on state AI law enforcement, supported by GOP Commerce Committee leadership in the House and Senate, has gone through three iterations since May. What started as a moratorium covering all 50 states (see here) is now being pitched as a prerequisite for states to receive certain federal funding.
The latest version, the text of which Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz released yesterday (see here), cleared a key procedural hurdle by satisfying the chamber’s Byrd rule. Under that rule, reconciliation bill provisions must have a budgetary impact.
According to Cruz, states wishing to receive a portion of just $500 million in a pool of federal funding for AI projects must first agree not to enforce their AI regulations for a decade, with the exception of laws that would loosen restrictions on AI development (see here).
Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee are offering a competing interpretation, saying Cruz’s plan actually implicates all funds in Congress’s $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. As a result, they say, states will have to make an unfair choice between broadband funding and AI regulation.
The loss of BEAD money would present a rural state like Montana with an impossible choice, said state Senator Barry Usher of Montana, who serves on an AI task force with the National Conference of State Legislators.
“Montana is a very, very, very large state, and that BEAD money, we're trying to get just Internet access to everybody. But without that funding, we're not going to be able to accomplish that goal," Usher said. "So I believe tying that money is just the wrong way for the feds to control what the states can and cannot do."
While state lawmakers such as Tennessee state Senator Bo Watson said they believed their federal lawmakers, like US Senator Marsha Blackburn, were supportive and sympathetic, their frustration today was palpable. Federal lawmakers who have spoken out against out against the measure include Blackburn and Josh Hawley of Missouri (see here).
“I think probably most members of Congress weren’t really aware this was in the bill,” said Watson, who worked on Tennessee’s ELVIS Act (see here).
Blessing said federal lawmakers should realize that AI is too big an issue to be regulated only at the federal level.
Congress “really should let this go. Let the states be the laboratories of democracy,” he said. “If they want to be the sole regulators of AI, this isn’t like tobacco policy or something like that. This is going to be a multi-year, decades-long battle, and I think they are going to regret taking on all the heat.”
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