• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday asked Mississippi officials to respond to the tech group NetChoice's emergency request to halt a state law that 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.

On Monday, NetChoice -- which counts Google, Meta and other large tech companies as members -- petitioned Alito to reverse the 5th Circuit and block enforcement, arguing that the Mississippi statute violates the First Amendment. If granted, that request would prevent Mississippi from enforcing the law.

Alito, who handles emergency appeals of 5th Circuit orders, gave Mississippi's attorney general until 4 p.m. July 30 to respond to that request.

In addition to requiring parental consent for social media, 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.

Those requirements apply 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.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Halil Ozerden in the Southern District of Mississippi issued an injunction prohibiting Mississippi from enforcing the law against eight NetChoice members -- Dreamwidth, Meta Platforms, Nextdoor, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, X and YouTube.

"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."

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 a majority opinion that the statute violated the First Amendment.

"California’s effort to regulate violent video games is the latest episode in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors," he wrote. "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply."

He added that states don't have a “free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

Three justices currently on the court -- John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan -- joined Scalia's opinion in that matter.

Alito, also on the court in 2011, agreed with the result in that case, but disagreed with the court's analysis. He said in a written concurrence that law's definition of "violent video games" was too vague to be constitutional.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in that case.