• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

Siding against tech platforms, a federal judge has refused to block a Tennessee law that prohibits Facebook, Instagram, Snap and other social media companies from allowing minors under 18 to create accounts, without parental consent.

In a ruling issued late Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Eli Richardson in Nashville said NetChoice hadn't proven that the law posed a threat of "irreparable injury" to its members.

The ruling comes in NetChoice's challenge to Tennessee's Protecting Children from Social Media Act, which was passed last year and took effect in January.

The Tennessee law, in addition to banning minors from social media, without parental consent, also requires social platforms to verify all users ages.

NetChoice argued the law violates social platforms' First Amendment right to distribute content, teens' First Amendment rights by restricting their ability to access media, and the rights of all social media users by effectively requiring them to identify themselves before accessing content.

The statute runs afoul of “bedrock principles of constitutional law and precedent from across the nation,” NetChoice alleged in its court papers. The group's members include Meta, Snap, Google and other large tech companies.

The organization noted that the Supreme Court in 2011 struck down a California law that would have prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors, unless their parents consented. Justice Antonin Scalia said in that matter that states don't have a “free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

NetChoice additionally argued to Richardson that its members were already being affected by the statute, noting that one company -- hyperlocal social platform NextDoor -- had started blocking users under 18 from its platform, due to the law.

NetChoice also contended that the law also was harming social platforms' users, arguing that a deprivation of First Amendment rights is considered an irreparable injury.

Richardson rejected those arguments, writing that NetChoice would only be entitled to an injunction if its members -- not their users -- could show irreparable harm.

He suggested he would reconsider NetChoice's request if Tennessee officials threatened to sue any of the group's members over alleged violations.

"Should circumstances change -- for example, if defendant threatens or institutes enforcement actions pending the outcome of this litigation -- the calculus could change regarding irreparable injury," Richardson wrote.

First Amendment lawyer Aaron Mackey with the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation says the ruling is an outlier, and inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent.

Requiring NetChoice to show a threat of prosecution before obtaining an injunction "holds NetChoice to a standard no other speaker challenging a law that violates First Amendment rights has ever been held to," Mackey says.

He adds that if the substance of a law violates the First Amendment, challengers "don't have to actually violate the law and invite an enforcement action" before obtaining an injunction against enforcement.

At least 10 other states have recently passed laws that either restrict teens from social platforms, or regulate platforms' ability to serve content to minors.

NetChoice and others have challenged a number of those laws, and have largely been successful, obtaining injunctions blocking all or part of statutes in states including Arkansas, Ohio, Florida, Mississippi, Utah, Texas and California.