The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.

Assembly Bill No. 1043 was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in October of last year, and becomes active on January 1, 2027 (via The Lunduke Journal).

The bill states, among other factors, that "An operating system provider shall do all of the following:"
"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.

This is basically impossible for California to enforce"
says CatoDomine on the Linuxmint subreddit.

"Even if Linux Mint decides to add some kind of age verification, to comply with CA law,
there's no reason anyone would choose that version."

"It's more likely they will put a disclaimer on their website: "not for use in California"
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/operating-systems/a-new-california-law-says-all-operating-systems-including-linux-need-to-have-some-form-of-age-verification-at-account-setup/