You may not know this, but Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)showed up when SEA was in a legal fight over making the LifeWise Academy curriculum public.
That is one reason we signed on to a coalition letter opposing California A.B. 1709.
And for us, that is not just a policy position.
It is personal.
Back in 2023, no one could get their hands on the LifeWise curriculum.
Not parents. Not school administrators. Not the public. Not even clergy. There was one, small sample available for public review.
So one of SEA’s co-founders published it on our website so the public could finally see for themselves what LifeWise was teaching.
And LifeWise came after us.
We knew what we were doing.
We also knew we did not really have a choice.
When an organization is operating in public school communities while refusing to let the public see what it is teaching, someone has to be willing to force the issue.
SEA was not going to back down.
Our community helped us crowdfund more than $10,000, and that support mattered enormously. It helped us secure the local legal help we needed at a critical moment.
And then EFF stepped in.
They took on the overwhelming majority of the real litigation fight pro bono.
That changed everything.
EFF brought the legal firepower we never could have afforded on our own. And this community helped make sure we could hold the line.
So when EFF speaks, we pay attention. And when they ask people to stand up against something dangerous, we take that seriously.
The coalition letter argues that A.B. 1709 would block many young people under 16 from social media, burden speech and anonymity, and create serious privacy and data-security risks through age-verification systems.
And that matters.
Because bills like this are often sold to the public as “child safety,” when what they really build is surveillance, censorship, and barriers to information.
Those are not the same thing.
Online spaces can be lifelines, especially for young people in restrictive, isolated, or unsupportive environments. We know that. Many of you know that too.
So yes, this is principled for us.
But it is personal too.
We do not forget who showed up.
We do not forget who helped defend the public’s right to know.
And we are honored to stand with EFF now.
Read the coalition letter below.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fO8xxLpNT3h_rnGYlcNRl8LkXRP8Nt42SPzmIByKGBI/edit?usp=sharing
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