Law note · South Carolina
Age-Appropriate Design Code, sensitive personal data and biometric data
Chapter 80 defines sensitive personal data to include a Social Security number, precise geolocation, racial or ethnic origin, citizenship or immigration status, religious or philosophical beliefs, union membership, the contents of an individual's mail, email, or text messages, genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying an individual, and health data.
'Biometric data' itself is never defined anywhere in the 30,353-character enacted text; the term appears exactly twice, once in this sensitive-data list and once in the publicly-available-data carve-out below, with no accompanying definitional entry among the chapter's twenty defined terms.
Whether the term excludes an identifier derived from a photograph, video, or audio recording therefore cannot be determined from the statutory text; there is no definitional clause to read as imposing or narrowing such an exclusion.
A narrower, separate carve-out excludes only 'biometric data collected by a covered online service about a minor without the minor's knowledge' from the chapter's definition of publicly available data, which does not address an adult's biometric data, or a knowingly collected minor's, drawn from a public recording.
What it asks of an app
- Treat biometric data processed to uniquely identify a minor as sensitive personal data requiring this chapter's heightened, minor-protective design duties.
- Do not assume a recording-derived faceprint or voiceprint is excluded from 'biometric data' here. The chapter never defines the term, so no exclusion or clawback can be confirmed either way from the statutory text.
- Do not treat a minor's biometric data collected without the minor's knowledge as publicly available data, even if drawn from an otherwise public source.
When LexLint raises it
Declared activities: processes_biometrics, crawls_web, trains_models, high_risk_decisions
Primary source: official South Carolina session law text, Act No. 96 of 2026 (H. 3431), South Carolina Legislature website