Interesting Provision in Social Media Bill

I always appreciate interesting provisions in California legislation. Whether clients support or oppose a particular measure, I spend time reviewing language of bills to understand what is written, particularly when there are intriguing bill sections. In that vein, the following provision caught my eye recently:

The provisions of this act are intended to complement and augment, not replace or diminish, federal protections in the field of social media safety.

This section appears in a recent social media bill, obviously, and I have not seen such a provision in legislation. I did find that the term “complement and augment” appears in two Codes – Education Code, and Health and Safety Code. However, I could not find instances where the phrase “replace or diminish” is used in California Codes.

This new provision of law, assuming enactment of this bill, expresses the intent that federal law would essentially prevail and that these new statutory provisions in California law would be in addition to, or supplement, the federal law. Similar language is seen in other legislation, but this bill’s particular language is different than I usually see.

In addition, an interesting aspect of this language is that it is only intent language. While intent language is common in California legislation, if the Legislature wanted to put teeth into the above provision, they could substitute the phrase “are intended to” with “shall.” Otherwise, intent language does not have any force or effect.