• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

A federal judge on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits Mississippi from prosecuting eight members of the tech industry group NetChoice -- including Meta Platforms, X and YouTube -- over potential violations of a law that restricts teens' ability to use social media.

The injunction does not prevent Mississippi from attempting to sue TikTok or other companies over alleged violations.

The ruling came in NetChoice's challenge to Mississippi House Bill 1126, which requires “digital services” providers, including social media platforms, to verify all users' ages, and prohibits minors from creating social media accounts, without parental permission.

That statute also requires 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.

As written, the law applies 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.

U.S. District Court Judge Halil Ozerden in the Southern District of Mississippi said Wednesday in a 35-page opinion that enforcing the law against NetChoice's members would likely violate the First Amendment.

"As applied to NetChoice’s covered members, the Act likely burdens substantially more speech than is necessary for the state to safeguard the physical and psychological wellbeing of minors online," Ozerden wrote.

He added that the law would restrict minors from accessing content "regardless of whether the content concerns or negatively affects minors’ physical and psychological wellbeing."

A spokesperson for Mississippi's attorney general said, "We will continue to fight for this commonsense law because our children’s mental health, physical security, and innocence should not take a back seat to Big Tech profits."

Ozerden noted in his ruling that the Supreme Court in 2011 struck down a California law that would have banned the sale of violent video games to minors, without parental consent. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that while the government has the power to protect children, states don't have a “free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

Ozerden's preliminary injunction only blocks enforcement against eight companies -- Dreamwidth, Meta Platforms, Nextdoor, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, X, and YouTube.

But if Mississippi were to accuse a non-NetChoice member such as TikTok of violating the law, that company could fight the case on First Amendment grounds, according to Aaron Mackey, a First Amendment lawyer with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation

"As a practical matter, if such an action were filed against a non-NetChoice member, it would immediately be challenged," Mackey says.

Ozerden's opinion would lend support to such a challenge, but wouldn't guarantee success because other judges are not required to follow his ruling.

NetChoice first sued over the Mississippi law last year, arguing that the statute violates its members rights as well minors' and adults' rights to access constitutionally protected speech.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch countered that the law was justified by the need to protect young people from online harms associated with social media.

Last July, Ozerden sided with NetChoice and blocked the state from enforcing the statute, ruling that the restrictions likely violate the First Amendment, and that the statute is so vague that it likely violates social media platforms' right to due process of law.

Mississippi appealed that decision to the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which lifted the block in April.

That court said Ozerden should have addressed questions about the law's scope before blocking it. The appellate judges specifically said Ozerden hadn't considered the “full range” of activities and companies that could might be covered by the law, and whether some applications of the law would not violate the First Amendment. For instance, the appellate court wrote, Ozerden didn't examine whether the law would apply to a host of companies -- incuding Uber, Google Maps or DraftKings.

Last month, NetChoice again asked Ozerden to block the law on First Amendment grounds. The group noted in its renewed request that the law excludes Uber, Google Maps and DraftKings because Google Maps and Uber mainly provide content themselves, and that DraftKings offers sports. 

The tech group also amended its complaint last month by adding a claim that applying the law to its members would be unconstitutional.

While Wednesday's preliminary injunction only prohibits lawsuits against NetChoice members, it's possible Ozerden could expand the ruling in the future.

He hasn't yet set a schedule for further proceedings in the case.