WASHINGTON — Supporters of greater liability for online platforms that are used to host child sexual abuse material see a path for their stalled legislation when lawmakers return to Washington after the midterm elections next month.

The push has gained steam in the Senate, where it is included in a proposed manager’s amendment to the annual defense policy bill, but the language is not included in the House-passed version of the same legislation.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is the sponsor of the stand-alone version of the bill, known as the Strengthening Transparency and Obligations to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment or STOP CSAM Act. The legislation would impose increased penalties on social media and technology companies that do not report uses of their platform that violate policies against child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., is a lead co-sponsor of the bipartisan measure, which the committee advanced unanimously in June 2025.

In a statement Wednesday, Durbin — who is retiring after a 44-year career in Congress, spanning seven terms in the House and five in the Senate — pledged continued work on the measure.

“As I have learned more about the horrors of online child sexual exploitation, I have made it my mission to try to put an end to it,” he said. “During the lame duck, I welcome all avenues to push the STOP CSAM Act across the finish line.”

On Wednesday, a group of over 100 organizations involved in combating child exploitation and human trafficking wrote a letter to House and Senate leadership, as well as the leadership of each chamber’s Armed Services Committee, in support of the bill.

“It is vital that the STOP CSAM Act be retained as part of the NDAA,” the letter said. “Any effort to remove these provisions now would represent a victory for online predators who must be stopped.”

The bill includes a private right of action for individual victims of sexual exploitation or abuse online to sue platforms if the platform promoted or facilitated the abusive conduct.

“By opening the courthouse doors, not only will survivors receive justice through judgments, but companies that are complicit will finally change their behavior,” the letter said.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Hawley shared a previous social media post on the inclusion of his bill in the NDAA, which said that “Congress needs to pass this bill and give parents and victims the power to hold Big Tech Accountable.”

Tech industry lobbying

Nate King, director of U.S. congressional affairs for the anti-trafficking International Justice Mission, said the bill is up against the technology industry’s “powerful lobby.”

He said that tech companies are “quite reticent to see any efforts to address the way that they handle issues relative to their business, including child sexual exploitation, move forward.”

In 2026 third-quarter lobbying reports, both Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube, listed the bill as a subject of their lobbying efforts, though they did not specify a position.

At a Senate Judiciary hearing in early 2024, a representative from X, formerly Twitter, said the company supports the STOP CSAM legislation, and Durbin said he believed it was the first social media company to do so publicly.

In March of 2024, Google also came out in favor of that year’s version of the legislation. Google, Meta, Snap and X did not respond to requests for comment on their current positions on the bill.

King said the next challenge is likely gaining support from House leadership, including in negotiations over the NDAA.

Critics of the bill, including some civil liberties and privacy advocates, have said that its broad liability could lead platforms to end their use of end-to-end encryption, lest they unknowingly allow for the transfer of child pornography materials. The result, critics say, would be less privacy for all users.

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out their concerns with the STOP CSAM Act in a June 2025 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders.

The measure is among a group of bills aimed at fighting child sexual abuse online.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed a measure that would shield from liability law enforcement vendors that store digital evidence in child pornography cases. The House passed its own version of the bill in September.

Other key bills include one the Senate Judiciary Committee approved that would make it a crime to coerce a minor into violence against themselves or another person or animal. Another Senate Judiciary-reported bill combines several measures related to children’s online safety under the umbrella of a House-passed bill to address online child exploitation.

That bill includes updates to sentencing guidelines for child pornography crimes and explicit prohibitions on coercing a minor into suicide or threatening to distribute a depiction of a minor engaging in explicit conduct.

Google and Snap, which owns Snapchat, each lobbied on both bills and on the evidence storage bill, according to their third quarter reports, while Meta lobbied just on the anti-coercion measure.

Neither bill has yet received a vote on the Senate floor.

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