• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

The tech group NetChoice late Monday asked the Supreme Court to halt a Mississippi law that requires social platforms to verify all users' ages, and prohibits minors from creating social media accounts without parental permission.

A district court judge issued an injunction blocking enforcement on the grounds that the law violated the 1st Amendment, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction without comment last week.

NetChoice argues in a petition submitted to Justice Samuel Alito that the 5th Circuit's order "would transform how Mississippi residents access and experience fully protected online speech -- and how social media websites curate, disseminate, and display this speech."

The group adds: "This law would stifle the internet’s promise of 'relatively unlimited, low-cost capacity for communication of all kinds,' by requiring users to jump through substantial barriers to accessing speech that this Court -- not to mention numerous courts across the country -- have held unconstitutional in a variety of contexts," NetChoice writes.

The Mississippi law 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.

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.

NetChoice -- which counts Google, Meta and other large tech companies as members -- sued to block the law as unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Halil Ozerden in the Southern District of Mississippi sided with NetChoice and prohibited the state from enforcing the law against eight NetChoice members -- Dreamwidth, Meta Platforms, Nextdoor, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, X and YouTube.

Ozerden noted in his ruling that in 2011 the Supreme Court 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."

NetChoice also draws on that ruling in its petition to Alito, arguing that the Mississippi law violates the First Amendment for the same reason as California's law regarding violent video games.

The Mississippi law "would impose an unconstitutional hurdle for minors to access protected speech, outright prohibiting access for some minors," NetChoice writes.

"Similarly, any parental-consent requirement to access social media burdens websites’ right to disseminate fully protected speech," the group adds.