• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, June 3, 2025

A federal judge has blocked enforcement of a Florida law that prohibits platforms with “addictive features” from allowing anyone under 14 to create or maintain accounts, and requires those platforms to obtain parental consent before allowing 14- or 15-year-olds to create or maintain accounts.

In a ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee said the law, passed last year, likely violates teens' free speech rights.

“Youth have First Amendment rights,” Walker wrote in a 58-page opinion. “Youth are people, not mere people-in-waiting or extensions of their parents. They have their own interests, ideas, and minds.”

He added that prior court decisions have upheld minor's First Amendment rights “to learn, to refuse to salute the flag, to protest war, to view films, to play video games, to attend political rallies or religious services even without the authorization of their parents, and more.”

The ruling comes in a lawsuit brought in October by tech organizations NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which challenged Florida's House Bill 3.

That law's restrictions on teen accounts apply to platforms with an allegedly addictive quality -- such as displaying “like” counts, or automatically playing videos. The statute only applies to a platform if at least 10% of users under 16 spend at least two hours per day on average at that platform.

Walker initially dismissed the organizations' complaint, ruling in March they lacked “standing” to proceed because they hadn't shown how any members would be affected.

NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association then filed an amended complaint and again urged Walker to block the law on First Amendment grounds. The groups specifically alleged in their amended complaint that NetChoice member Snap was likely covered by the law. That complaint includes allegations that Snapchat, operated by Snap, allows teens under 16 to create accounts without parental permission, deploys recommendation algorithms and allows push notifications.

(In April, soon after the tech groups amended their complaint, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued Snap in state court based on the new allegations. That matter was transferred to federal court last month and is currently pending in front of Walker.)

Uthmeier opposed the tech groups' request to block the law, arguing that it advances the government's interest in protecting children's mental health.

Walker rejected that argument, ruling that the law wasn't a good fit for legislators' objectives.

“Even assuming the significance of the State’s interest in limiting the exposure of youth to websites with 'addictive features,' the law’s restrictions are an extraordinarily blunt instrument for furthering it,” he wrote.

Walker also noted that the Supreme Court in 2011 struck down a California law that would banned the sale of violent video games to minors, without parental consent.

He opined that one reason why minors have free speech rights is because they are “citizens in training,” writing: “The responsibilities and privileges of citizenship are significant, and our constitutional system is better served when its citizens build those muscles over time, beginning when they are young, rather than all at once the day they come of age.”