• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, 4 hours ago

A federal judge has blocked Georgia from enforcing a new law that would have required social platforms to verify users' ages, and prohibit platforms from allowing minors under 16 to create accounts, without parental permission.

"The state seeks to erect barriers to speech that cannot withstand the rigorous scrutiny that the Constitution requires, and the inapt tailoring of the law -- which is rife with exemptions that undermine its purpose -- dooms its constitutionality and calls into question its efficacy," U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg in Atlanta said in a 50-page opinion issued Thursday.

The Protecting Georgia's Children on Social Media Act, signed earlier this year by Governor Brian Kemp, also would have prohibited platforms from displaying ads to users under 16 based on their “personal information” other than their ages and locations.

The restrictions would have applied to some platforms that allow account holders to create profiles, upload material, view user-generated content, and interact with other users. But a broad array of companies that often incorporate social functionality -- including news and entertainment sites, e-commerce businesses and interactive gaming platforms -- would have been exempted from the restrictions.

NetChoice -- which counts Meta, Snap, Google and other large tech companies as members -- sued to block the law. The groups said the age verification mandate and parental consent requirement violate the First Amendment, and that the restrictions on ads violate the First Amendment as well as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects web companies from liability for publishing content created by third parties.

Totenberg sided with the organization, writing that the parental consent mandate would likely "would dramatically curb minors’ ability to speak and access to speech."

She referenced a 2011 Supreme Court decision striking down California restrictions on the sale of violent video games to minors, noting that Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in that case: "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply.”

Totenberg added that the age verification requirement would "potentially all but kill anonymous speech online," despite Supreme Court decisions upholding people's right to speak anonymously.

"Requiring users to tie their online views to their identity would undoubtedly chill speech -- and, likely, would disproportionately chill speech on the most controversial issues," she wrote.

The judge also found the law violated the First Amendment because the restrictions were content-based -- meaning that they only applied to social platforms that offered certain kinds of content.

"It is inexplicable how the state plans to determine which platforms serve a 'predominant or exclusive function' of news, sports, entertainment, gaming, career development, academic research, or public safety without looking to the content of those websites, and the posts on them, and making highly discretionary calls about that content," she wrote.