Law note · South Carolina
Age-Appropriate Design Code, enforcement
The Attorney General enforces Chapter 80. A covered online service is liable for treble the financial damages incurred as a result of a violation, and officers and employees of a covered online service may be held personally liable for willful and wanton violations.
The 30,353-character enacted text does not resolve whether the treble-damages remedy is available to a private plaintiff or is confined to a suit the Attorney General brings: no clause reads that an injured person may bring a civil action, the phrasing South Carolina's breach statute uses to grant one, and no clause reads that the chapter creates no private right of action, the phrasing Pennsylvania's and West Virginia's comparable proposed and dead bills use to foreclose one.
This document leaves private_right_of_action unrecorded for this instrument rather than guessing; the treble-damages and personal-liability clauses read most naturally as remedies within the Attorney General's own suit given the enforcement section's framing naming only the Attorney General, but no clearer textual anchor or construing case was found.
What it asks of an app
- Expect the South Carolina Attorney General to enforce this chapter, with treble damages available for a violation and personal liability for officers and employees on a willful or wanton violation.
- Do not assume this chapter is silent on private enforcement or that it is settled either way. Whether a private plaintiff may invoke the treble-damages remedy is unresolved in the statutory text.
When LexLint raises it
Declared activities: crawls_web, trains_models, deploys_chatbot, automated_outreach
Primary source: official South Carolina session law text, Act No. 96 of 2026 (H. 3431), South Carolina Legislature website