A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Utah law designed to regulate social-media access for minors, dealing a blow to state Republicans’ legislative efforts to protect the mental health of children from addictive algorithms.
In his order, U.S. District Court judge Robert Shelby handed a preliminary victory to NetChoice — a tech-industry trade group whose members include Amazon, Meta, Snap, Google, and X — halting enforcement of the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act for now, as litigation runs its course in court. The law requires age verification and express parental consent for social-media users under 18, among other provisions.
Initially introduced last year, the social-media legislation was revised in March after the tech industry claimed the First Amendment rights of Utah residents were violated by limiting their access to content and requiring them to verify their ages. The amended version that Republican governor Spencer Cox signed was slated to go into effect on October 1. NetChoice’s lawsuit is on its way to preventing that.
While the trade association says the law in question is unconstitutional, Utah argues it is protecting young people who are vulnerable to social-media addiction, targeted advertising, and personalized content.
“The court recognizes the State’s earnest desire to protect young people from the novel challenges associated with social media use,” Judge Shelby wrote. “But owing to the First Amendment’s paramount place in our democratic system, even well-intentioned legislation that regulates speech based on content must satisfy a tremendously high level of constitutional scrutiny.”
The Obama appointee said the defendants did not provide enough evidence to distinguish between social-media companies’ use of “addictive design features” and “user-generated [content] and user-to-user interface.” Utah officials “only compare social media services to ‘entertainment services.’ They do not account for the wider universe of platforms that utilize the features they take issue with, such as news sites and search engines,” Shelby noted.
While letting NetChoice’s lawsuit proceed, the judge dismissed legal arguments put forth by a group of social-media users who sued Utah officials over similar claims. “The Act regulates social media companies—not social media users,” he wrote, addressing the latter plaintiff.
Utah attorney general Sean Reyes is one of two defendants named in the NetChoice case. “We’re disappointed in the district court’s decision preliminarily enjoining Utah’s Minor Protection in Social Media Act,” Reyes told National Review. “The AG’s office is analyzing the ruling to determine next steps. We remain committed to protecting Utah’s youth from social media’s harmful effects.”
Meanwhile, NetChoice celebrated Tuesday’s preliminary injunction.
“Utah’s law not only violates the First Amendment, but if enforced would backfire and endanger the very people it’s meant to help,” NetChoice Litigation Center director Chris Marchese said in a Wednesday statement. “We look forward to seeing this law, and others like it, permanently struck down and online speech and privacy fully protected across the country.”
NetChoice has obtained similar injunctions of social-media regulations in California, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi, Texas, and Utah. In July, the Supreme Court declined to issue a judgment on laws in Florida and Texas that regulate how social-media platforms censor content. NetChoice was directly involved in that case.