• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 18, 2025

A federal judge has thrown out the tech industry's challenge to Florida's social media law, ruling that the groups that filed suit -- NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association -- failed to show how their members would be affected by the law's restrictions.

“Plaintiffs do not allege sufficient facts to allow this court to draw a reasonable inference that at least one of their members faces an injury in fact from the challenged law,” U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee wrote in an opinion issued Monday.

The ruling came in the organizations' challenge to Florida's House Bill 3, which prohibits platforms with “addictive features” from allowing anyone under 14 to create or maintain accounts, and require those platforms to obtain parental consent before allowing 14- or 15-year-olds to create or maintain accounts.

That bill, passed last year, applies to a platform if at least 10% of users under 16 spend at least two hours per day on average at that platform. Also, the law only covers platforms that employ an allegedly addictive quality -- such as displaying “like” counts, or automatically playing videos.

The tech groups -- which represent large tech companies including Facebook and YouTube -- argued in a complaint filed in October that the law violates the First Amendment in several ways, including by preventing minors from accessing lawful speech.

Walker didn't directly rule on the First Amendment issue. Instead, he said the complaint didn't spell out whether members of the tech industry groups would have “addictive” features, as defined by the Florida law.

“Because this law does not regulate 'social media' platforms generally, but instead limits its coverage to those platforms that meet each of four specific criteria, this court cannot reasonably infer that any particular platform is likely covered by the law without some factual allegations regarding each of those criteria,” he wrote.

He said the organizations could amend their complaint and refile it by March 31.

NetChoice associate director of litigation Paul Taske stated the group is considering “all available legal options to ensure Florida’s unconstitutional, harmful ID for the internet is ultimately halted.”