A federal judge in Utah has temporarily banned the practice social media access laws Leaders say these were intended to protect children’s mental health and personal privacy, and are unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction against laws that require social media companies to verify the age of their users, disable certain features and restrict the use of children’s accounts in Utah.
The laws were set to take effect on October 1 but are being blocked pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by NetChoice, a nonprofit representing internet companies including Google, Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), Snap and X.
The Utah Legislature has passed the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act to replace laws passed in 2023 that were 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 that come with social media use,” Shelby wrote in his order. However, the state has not established a compelling public interest in violating the social media companies’ First Amendment rights, he wrote.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said he was disappointed with the court’s decision and knew it could be a long fight, but said it was “a fight worth fighting” because of the harm social media does to children.
“Let’s be clear: social media companies could voluntarily do everything the law says to protect our children right now. But they refuse to do so. Instead, they continue to put their profits ahead of the well-being of our children. This has to stop, and Utah will continue to lead the fight.”
NetChoice says Utah residents must provide more information to verify their age than what social media companies normally collect, increasing the risk of a data breach.
A few months after Utah was the first state to pass laws regulating children’s use of social media by 2023, TikTok and Meta Sued because he allegedly lured children with addictive properties.
Utah’s 2024 laws would require default privacy settings for minors’ accounts to limit access to direct messages and sharing features and disable features like autoplay and push notifications that lawmakers say could lead to overuse.
Parents could gain access to their children’s accounts and sue a social media company if their child’s mental health deteriorates due to excessive use of an algorithmically engineered app. Social media companies would have to meet a long list of requirements, including a three-hour daily limit and a blackout from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., to avoid liability.
The laws sought to shift the burden of proof from families to social media companies, requiring them to show that their curated content did not, in whole or in part, cause a child’s depression, anxiety or self-harm behavior. Companies would have to pay at least $10,000 in damages for each instance of a negative mental health outcome.
NetChoice has obtained preliminary injunctions in California, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Texas temporarily halting similar restrictions on social media, the organization said.
“With this sixth injunction challenging these overreaching laws, we hope that policymakers will focus on meaningful and constitutional solutions for the digital age,” said Chris Marchese, director of litigation at NetChoice.