In January 2017, the State of California enacted state bill AB-1687, a SAG-AFTRA-backed anti-ageism statute which requires "commercial online entertainment employment services" to honor requests by their subscribers for their ages and birthdays to be hidden.[75] By the beginning of 2017, IMDb had received more than 2,300 requests from individuals to remove their date of birth from the site. Included in this group were 10 Academy Award winners and another 71 nominated for Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes.[76] On February 23, 2017, Judge Vince Girdhari Chhabria issued a stay on the bill pending a further trial, on the ground that it possibly violated the First Amendment because it inhibited the public consumption of information. He also questioned the intent of the bill, as it was ostensibly meant to target IMDb.[77] In February 2018, Chhabria struck down the statute,[78] and in June 2020, the Ninth Circuit affirmed Chhabria's judgement, holding that the statute was an unconstitutional content-based restriction that violated the First Amendment.[79][80]
IMDb had long maintained that it would keep all valid information, but changed that policy related to birth names in 2019, instead removing birth names that are not widely and publicly known, of persons who no longer use their birth names.[81] This was done in response to pressure from LGBTQ groups against the publication of the birth names of transgender people without their consent (deadnaming). Any name a person had previously been credited under, however, continues to be maintained in the credits section.[81]