• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 1, 2024

A federal judge on Monday blocked a new Mississippi law that would have required “digital services” providers, including social media platforms, to verify all users' ages, and prohibited minors from creating social media accounts, without parental permission.

In a 40-page decision, U.S. District Court Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden in the Southern District of Mississippi said the restrictions likely violate the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech. Ozerden also said the statute is so vague that it likely violates social media platforms' right to due process of law.

The law, which had been slated to take effect July 1, also would have required social platforms to prevent or mitigate minors' exposure to “harmful material” -- defined as including material that promotes or facilitates eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual abuse and online bullying.

The measure would have applied to websites that allow users to create profiles and socially interact, with exemptions for employment-related sites and sites that “primarily” offer news, sports, commerce, online video games and content curated by the service provider.

Last month, the tech industry-funded group NetChoice sued to block the law, arguing that it violates the First Amendment rights of minors as well as adults for numerous reasons -- including that provisions regarding content amount to unconstitutional governmental censorship.

“In short, the act requires covered websites to monitor and censor speech, much of which is protected by the First Amendment, potentially even including Romeo and Juliet and The Bell Jar,” NetChoice argued.

The group added that whether content will be deemed harmful “will often be open to debate, because the meaning conveyed by the speech at issue can depend on context, nuance, and the subjective understanding of users.”

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch countered that the law was justified by the need to protect young people from online threats.

Fitch specifically argued in papers filed last month that the law “makes it harder for predators to gain access to minors and prey on them online by making it harder for minors to participate in online platforms that are dangerous.”

In siding with NetChoice, Ozerden wrote that the law's restrictions weren't a good fit for the goals expressed by Fitch.

For instance, he wrote, there have been reports of suspected child sexual exploitation on Amazon and Roblox, but both services are exempt from the law's requirements.

He added that the statute's definition of “digital service provider” -- including the carve-out for services that “primarily” offered news, sports or certain other material -- likely was too vague to be constitutional.

“It is unclear what test one uses to determine how a digital service 'primarily' functions,” he wrote. “NetChoice has carried its preliminary burden at this stage of the case of demonstrating that this definition is overly indefinite, leaving it open for potential arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”

Ozerden also said in the ruling that the provision requiring all users to verify their ages “burdens adults' First Amendment rights.”

Lawmakers in Arkansas, Utah, Ohio, California and New York have also recently passed measures that would restrict how social media services serve content to minors. NetChoice has so far obtained injunctions prohibiting enforcement of those laws in Arkansas, Ohio and California.