A bipartisan measure would force betting and prediction-market apps to scan a user’s face before a wager, all in the name of shutting kids out. Few argue with the aim, yet the specifics, and the label on the bill, are murkier than they first appear.
- Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act, unveiled July 15, would order betting and prediction-market apps to confirm a user is old enough by scanning their face before money changes hands
- Rather than a one-time check at signup, the scan would run again and again, each login or each wager, to stop a minor from riding an adult’s already-approved account
- The name oversells it: the tool actually guesses age from facial features and, per the sponsor, keeps no identity or biometric records, which is age estimation rather than true facial recognition
- In an odd twist, the prediction market Kalshi helped roll the bill out, a company cheering on regulation of its own corner of the industry
- Skeptics counter that the plan skips over accuracy, bias, and spoofing, and sets a precedent for face-scanning your way into a legal pastime
Legislation now in Congress would slip a camera between you and your next online wager. The pitch is protecting kids from betting apps, something almost nobody objects to. The argument is over whether a face scan is the right fix, and the bill’s title fogs up the very first question worth asking.
What the Bill Would Do
New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer put forward the Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act on July 15, with a bipartisan group of eight cosponsors behind it, among them Republican Bruce Westerman and Democrat Tom Suozzi. As written, the bill would make online sportsbooks and prediction markets confirm a customer’s age through a facial scan before that person can lay a bet or trade a contract. The catch that sets it apart is repetition: the scan would fire on an ongoing basis, each time someone signs in or tries to wager, instead of the one-and-done check when an account is first opened. That single design choice reshapes how the legal gambling age gets enforced online.
The Loophole It Is Chasing
The gap the sponsors describe will be familiar to any parent. Most platforms check a customer’s age a single time, when the account is created, and never look again, so a teenager who grabs an unlocked phone can wager on an adult’s approved account unchallenged. “Right now, kids can too easily log into a parent’s or sibling’s account and bet real money,” Gottheimer said. The numbers his office leaned on come from Common Sense Media: among boys 14 to 17, some 40 percent reported gambling in the past year, a share that still sits at 36 percent once younger boys down to age 11 are folded in, and better than a quarter of them described fallout like school trouble, household friction, or stress. On the enforcement side, the announcement flagged Tennessee sportsbooks catching more than 400 underage accounts during 2024, many times the earlier year’s count, plus better than 80 underage betting complaints in Iowa.
It Is Not Actually Facial Recognition
This is the distinction most write-ups glossed over. For all the “facial recognition” in the title, what the bill actually calls for is facial age estimation, and they are not interchangeable. Recognition pins down who you are by matching your face to stored records. Estimation merely reads the contours of a face to approximate how old its owner looks, and the sponsor insists no identity or biometric detail would be retained. The difference is not academic: a system that files your face away carries far heavier privacy baggage than one that takes a look and discards it. Naming the bill after the more invasive of the two only muddies a debate that lives or dies on precision.
The Kalshi Angle
One thing jumped out at the launch: standing next to Gottheimer was Tarek Mansour, who runs the prediction market Kalshi. An operator lobbying for federal rules over its own business is a rare sight, and the timing says a lot. Kalshi switched on its own face-based age screening back in May, and it has spent the year sparring with states and bargaining with the CFTC over whether its contracts are gambling or finance. Publicly backing a measure to protect minors lets it wear the white hat while that bigger fight grinds on. And for prediction markets generally, a national age rule could help a still-contested business look more like a fixture and less like an experiment.
The Questions Nobody Answered
For all the fanfare, the announcement skipped the hard mechanics. As the specialist outlet Biometric Update flagged the gap, nobody spelled out how precise the scans must be, what becomes of a user whose estimated age lands right on the legal line, or whether a person the software wrongly bounces gets a second path to verify. There was also nothing on defeating the obvious dodges, a held-up photo, a recorded clip, or a generated face aimed at the lens. Age-estimation accuracy tends to drift across different groups of people, too, so a mandate with loose standards could let some minors slip through while turning away adults who belong there.
The Privacy Pushback
That is where the civil-liberties worry enters. To privacy advocates, demanding a face scan to do something perfectly legal is biometric surveillance by another name, and a promise that nothing gets stored does not put every concern to rest. Opponents of face-based age gates raise the odds of wrong answers, patchy results across demographics, the safety of whatever data does pass through, and, above all, the precedent. The moment a face scan becomes the toll for placing a bet, the same reasoning can spread to other corners of the web, which is why a bill pointed squarely at gambling has drawn eyes from well outside it.
Where It Stands
At this point it is a freshly filed bill, not a law, with the usual slow crawl through committee ahead of any vote. It also lands amid a broader movement, since a number of states have stood up their own age-verification requirements for betting apps over the past year, and a federal rule would swap that patchwork for a single national yardstick. Whether Congress makes face scanning that yardstick or eases off over the privacy and accuracy doubts will echo past the betting world. For anyone watching the rules keep shifting across the U.S. gambling landscape, it is a fight worth tracking, because the technology at the center of it is arriving regardless.