Gavin Newsom Signs Bills Protecting Compensation for Child Influencers
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law in Los Angeles on Thursday that offer new financial protections to children who perform and appear in income-generating online content.
One of those bills, California Assembly Bill 1880, expands California’s longtime Coogan Law protections for child performers to influencers and online content creators who are minors. The Coogan Law, which was signed into law in the state in 1939 and was named after child silent-film star Jackie Coogan, mandates that 15 percent of a child performer’s earnings be saved in a protected trust that they can access when they reach adulthood.
The other legislation that was greenlit on Thursday, Senate Bill 764, states that online influencers featuring children in at least 30 percent of their output must put away a percentage of gross earnings in a trust for the minor to access when they become an adult. The bill also requires creators to maintain records of income generated from content featuring children and how many minutes minors appeared in that content, among other information.
Former Disney Channel star Demi Lovato — who recently helmed and appeared in the Hulu documentary Child Star, which raised issues of financial exploitation of child performers — joined Newsom for the Thursday signing. The entertainment industry, Newsom said in a video posted to California Governor’s X account, “has obviously evolved now with online, social media, content creators” since the establishment of California’s Coogan Law. “There’s been this glaring gap, and this legislation basically closes that loophole,” he said.
Lovato called the laws “essentially the Coogan Law for the digital age” in a voiceover to the video.
Child Star, released on Sept. 17 on Hulu, features activist Chris McCarty of the organization Quit Clicking Kids, which champions efforts to compensate child performers and preserve minors’ right to privacy. McCarty and Lovato both advocated for legislation to protect child performers in California before Thursday’s signing.
The new laws arrive after Illinois passed pioneering legislation last year that requires influencers who incorporate children under the age of 16 into their content to save a percentage of gross compensation from that content in a trust. Illinois’ legislation took effect July 1.
Assembly Bill 1880 was introduced by Assemblymember Juan Alanis, while Senator Steve Padilla introduced Senate Bill 764. In a statement about the California laws, the national executive director of performers’ union SAG-AFTRA, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, said, “Regardless of medium or platform, all child performers must be strongly protected.”
