A federal judge in the US state of Utah has temporarily blocked a law on access to social media. According to politicians, the law was intended to protect children’s privacy and limit their employ of such platforms. The law is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby on Tuesday issued a transient restraining order against a law that would have required social media companies to verify the age of their users, apply privacy settings and restrict certain features of those accounts.
The law was set to take effect on October 1, but is blocked pending the outcome of the case filed by NetChoice, a nonprofit industry association for internet companies including Google, Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – Snap and X.
Utah lawmakers passed the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act to replace legislation passed in 2023 and challenged as unconstitutional. State officials believed the 2024 law would hold up in court.
But Shelby disagreed.
“The Court recognizes the State’s sincere desire to protect young people from the new challenges associated with social media use,” Shelby wrote in his order. However, the State has not shown a compelling governmental interest in violating the social media companies’ First Amendment rights, he wrote.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox expressed disappointment with the court’s decision and acknowledged it could be a long fight. But given the harm social media causes to children, he said it is “a fight worth fighting.”
“To be clear, social media companies could voluntarily do anything the law requires to protect our children right now. But they refuse to do so. Instead, they continue to put their profits above the well-being of our children. This must stop, and Utah will continue to lead the fight.”
NetChoice argues that Utah residents would have to provide more information to verify their age than social media companies typically collect, putting more information at risk of data misuse.
A few months after Utah became the first state to pass laws regulating children’s social media employ in 2023, the state sued TikTok and Meta for allegedly luring children with addictive features.
Utah’s 2024 law would have required default settings on minors’ accounts to restrict access to direct messages and sharing features and disable elements like autoplay and push notifications that lawmakers said could lead to excessive employ. The settings also limit how much account information social media companies can collect.
Another law giving parents the ability to sue a social media company if their child’s mental health deteriorates due to excessive employ of an algorithmically curated app takes effect on October 1. Social media companies must meet a long list of requirements – including a three-hour daily limit and a 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. blackout – to avoid liability. Damages would start at $10,000.
NetChoice has obtained injunctions temporarily suspending similar laws restricting social media in California, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Texas, the organization said.
“With this sixth injunction against these excessive laws, we hope policymakers will focus on sensible and constitutional solutions for the digital age,” said Chris Marchese, NetChoice’s litigation director.
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This story has been corrected to show that one of two social media laws is blocked.
