A bill that would require Utah parents to set aside money their children earn making online content is headed to Gov. Spencer Cox.
The Utah bill would require online creators who make more than $150,000 a year from content featuring kids to set aside 15% of those earnings into a trust fund that the children can access when they turn 18. Kevin Franke testified in support.
A bill that would require Utah parents to set aside money their children earn making online content is headed to Gov. Spencer Cox.
HB322, which also would allow adults to remove online content they made as kids from web platforms, passed the Utah Senate, 27-0, in the final hours of the 2025 legislative session Friday. It had previously passed the House.
The bill would require online creators who make more than $150,000 a year from content featuring kids to set aside 15% of those earnings into a trust fund that the children can access when they turn 18. The bill also sets the same rule for money child performers earn for appearing in movies or TV production.
Kevin Franke testified in support of the bill in February, recounting the “8 Passengers” YouTube channel in his now ex-wife, Ruby Franke, launched in 2015 featuring their six children. He called the bill “a great first step towards protecting child influencers here in the state of Utah, and there is much more to do in the future.”
“Children cannot give informed consent to be filmed on social media, period,” Franke said in a statement he read to a House committee on Feb. 19. “If we, as adults, cannot understand the emotional and psychological impacts of sharing our lives to millions of strangers online, how can we expect our children to understand them?”
In his testimony, he said he regretted that Ruby Franke put their children’s lives online. He also read statements in support of the bill written by two of his daughters, ages 16 and 11.
“This bill will prevent other kids from having to go through the pain of realizing that the compensation for years worth of time and effort is suddenly gone,” the 16-year-old wrote in her statement.
The “8 Passengers” channel had 2 million subscribers before it was deleted in 2022, ahead of Ruby and Kevin Franke’s divorce. Ruby Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, then launched a new channel, based on a self-improvement program Hildebrandt ran called ConneXions.
It all fell apart in August 2023, when the Frankes’ 12-year-old son escaped from Hildebrandt’s home in Ivins — and a neighbor called police because the boy appeared malnourished and had duct tape on his ankles and wrists. After an investigation found more evidence of abuse, Ruby Franke and Hildebrandt each pleaded guilty to four counts of aggravated child abuse, and each were sentenced to at least four years in prison.
The bill is similar to laws that protect child performers’ incomes in California, New York, Illinois, Louisiana and New Mexico, according to SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents film and TV actors.
California was the first state to pass such a law, back in 1939. It’s known as the Coogan Act, inspired by child star Jackie Coogan, who learned as an adult that his mother and stepfather were legally allowed to spend everything he earned in the 1920s and 1930s. (Coogan gained late-career fame in the 1960s, playing Uncle Fester on “The Addams Family” TV series.)
Last fall, California extended the Coogan Act to cover children appearing online.
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