• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 11, 2024

Utah officials plan to ask a federal appellate court to allow enforcement of a new law that would restrict social media platforms' ability to serve content to minors under 18.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby blocked the law last month, ruling that it likely violates the First Amendment.

On Thursday, the state attorney general's office filed papers to appeal that ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. State officials have not yet made substantive arguments to the 10th Circuit.

The Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act, originally slated to take effect October 1, would require platforms to limit the ability of minors under 18 to send direct messages or share information with users who aren't “connected” to the minor -- meaning, roughly, within a minor's network. That restriction could only be lifted by parents.

The new law also would require platforms to disable push notifications and automatically playing content on minors' accounts.

The statute repealed and replaced a 2023 statute that would have prohibited social media companies from allowing minors under 18 to have accounts without parental permission, and banned the companies from serving ads to minors.

The tech industry organization NetChoice sued over the law, arguing that it violates the First Amendment rights of minors as well as social platforms.

The group said in a request for an injunction that the law will leave minors “unable to interact with elected officials on X, share their artistic expression on Instagram, post their athletic highlights on YouTube, or ask for help with their homework on Nextdoor."

NetChoice added that the ban on push notifications was “the digital equivalent of the state banning a newspaper from proclaiming 'Extra! Extra! Read All About It!'”

Shelby blocked the law on constitutional grounds. “The court recognizes the state's earnest desire to protect young people from the novel challenges associated with social media use,” Shelby wrote in an opinion enjoining enforcement.

“But owing to the First Amendment's paramount place in our democratic system, even well-intentioned legislation that regulates speech based on content must satisfy a tremendously high level of constitutional scrutiny,” he continued.

He added that he is “sensitive to the mental health challenges many young people face,” but said Utah officials hadn't shown “a clear, causal relationship between minors’ social media use and negative mental health impacts.”