• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 9, 2024

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is appealing a court order that partially blocked a new law regulating how social media platforms serve content and ads to minors under 18.

The Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (HB 18), which had been slated to take effect September 1, included provisions that would have required social platforms deploy filtering technology to block "harmful" content to minors. The statute defines harmful content as including material that “promotes,” “glorifies,” or “facilitates” eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse, and “grooming ... or other sexual exploitation or abuse.”

Late last month, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman in Austin enjoined those provisions on First Amendment grounds. Pitman said those portions of the law were so broad and vague that they would allowed the government to censor constitutioanlly protected speech.

“It is far from clear that Texas has a compelling interest in preventing minors’ access to every single category of information” covered by the statute," Pitman wrote.

He added that the statute doesn't define key terms.

“When does an extreme diet cross the line into an 'eating disorder?' What defines 'grooming' and 'harassment?'” he wrote.

“Under these indefinite meanings, it is easy to see how an attorney general could arbitrarily discriminate in his enforcement of the law,” Pitman added. “Such a sweeping grant of censorial power cannot pass First Amendment scrutiny.”

Paxton's office late last week filed papers to appeal that injunction to the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Texas hasn't yet made substantive arguments to that court.

The 5th Circuit also is expected to decide whether to allow Mississippi to enforce a law that would prohibit minors from creating social media accounts without parental permission.

Pitman's ruling allows the state to enforce other portions of the law -- including restrictions on data collection from minors and targeted advertising to them -- but suggested that he would revisit those provisions after hearing more evidence about them.