Congress Wants Facial Age Checks to Verify Bettors' Ages

Rep. Josh Gottheimer introduced the Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act on July 15, 2026, with eight bipartisan co-sponsors and backing from Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour. Despite the name, the bill describes facial age estimation rather than identity-based facial recognition, technology that estimates how old a face looks without matching it to a known identity.

The bill treats prediction markets and traditional sportsbooks the same way, requiring both to run this age check either at login or before every wager. According to Gottheimer's office, the goal is closing a specific gap: online accounts are typically verified once, at signup, so nothing currently stops a minor from later using a parent's, sibling's, or friend's already-verified account. Casino apps and slots platforms aren't covered. The technology reads facial structure and patterns only, Gottheimer's office says, and won't store a user's identity or biometric data.

According to Common Sense Media, 36% of boys aged 11 to 17 have gambled in the past year, a figure that climbs to 40% for boys 14 to 17, statistics Gottheimer's office cited when introducing the bill. As written, though, the legislation leaves real gaps: no accuracy standard for the technology, no anti-spoofing safeguard, and no enforcement mechanism for platforms that don't comply. The accuracy question isn't hypothetical either. NIST's own testing of age-estimation algorithms found an average error of 3.1 years, with error rates running higher for female faces than male ones.