A federal judge has ruled a Louisiana law that would have restricted minors’ access to social media to be unconstitutional and blocked its enforcement. This ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by Netchoice, which is a tech industry group that represents such well-known names as Meta, Youtube, Reddit, Pinterest, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitch, and Discord.
Netchoice sued the attorney general as well as the Louisiana Department of Justice over the Secure Online Child Interaction and Age Limitation Act, which was passed by lawmakers in 2023.
The law would have required social media companies with 5 million users or more to verify the ages of users and obtain parental permission before allowing those under the age of 16 to create a profile on any of their networks. In the judge’s ruling, he says the law violates the First Amendment and is too vague to actually enforce.
In more than a dozen other states, similar age restrictions have been passed or proposed and have faced legal challenges of their own.
Loyola Law Professor Dane Ciolino says that, while he understands the concerns of parents, the restriction of social media access falls into murky legal waters.
“This ruling is similar to five or six similar rulings around the country that have found statutes that attempt to limit exposure to social media by minors …which is a social concern and a legitimate one legislatures have. But, it violates the First Amendment,” Ciolino explains.
Ciolino notes the wide-reaching legal approach to the social media issue will be tough to defend in courts. “This particular approach to the problem was content-based. It only targeted very large social media providers.
It applied not just to children, but to all users of those platforms who basically had to show ID just to get in the door,” the Loyola Law Professor points out.
“As a result, the judge found that this was not a narrowly tailored effort to address a compelling state interest of protecting minors,” he went on to say, adding that the law was both an under-inclusive and over-inclusive approach to addressing a growing problem.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has said the state plans to appeal the court’s decision, stating in a social media post, “It’s unfortunate that the court chose to protect huge corporations that facilitate child exploitation over the legislative policy to require simple age verification mechanisms.”