BOSTON—House lawmakers are hoping to close what critics describe as a loophole in state law that fails to protect minors from obscene electronic messages sent to them by suspected sexual predators.
An outside section in a supplemental budget scheduled to be debated Wednesday would bar anyone from using electronic means to purposefully disseminate harmful material to a person they know or believe to be a minor.
The language is the latest effort by lawmakers to reconcile free speech rights with the desire to protect children from predators who use modern-day tools such as the Internet, sexually-explicit text messages or emails to entice their victims.
A federal judge put on hold an earlier attempt to bring the law up to date, saying that the wording was too broad.
