• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Civil rights groups are urging the Supreme Court to prevent Mississippi from enforcing a law that requires social platforms to verify all users' ages, and prohibits minors from creating social media accounts without parental permission.

The law imposes "an impermissible bar for minors and a significant burden on adults seeking to engage with protected expression online," organizations including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Student Press Law Center write in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late last week with Justice Samuel Alito.

U.S. District Court Judge Halil Ozerden in the Southern District of Mississippi ruled the law likely violates the 1st Amendment, blocked the state from enforcing the statute against eight NetChoice members -- Dreamwidth, Meta Platforms, Nextdoor, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, X and YouTube.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction without comment earlier this month.

The tech group NetChoice, which is challenging the law, recently urged the Supreme Court to reverse the 5th Circuit on an emergency basis and reinstate Ozerden's injunction. The group submitted its request to Alito, who handles emergency appeals of 5th Circuit orders.

"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," NetChoice argued in its petition. The group's members include Google, Meta, Snap and other large tech companies.

In addition to mandating 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.

The measure 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.

The digital rights groups argue the law violates the First Amendment in several ways, including by restricting speech based on content.

"It regulates digital service providers only if they provide specified types of online content, and it requires those providers to restrict speech accessible to minors in certain subject areas (such as information on self-harm, eating disorders, bullying, or harassment)," the organizations write.

The groups add that the age-verification mandate will prevent adults from participating in social media.

"Adults without state-issued identification or who wish to remain anonymous, as is their right, are banned from participating in social digital service platforms," they argue.

Additionally, the parental-consent requirement "is an obvious violation of minors’ First Amendment rights," the groups add, noting that the Supreme Court previously struck down a California law that would have prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors, without parental consent.

The digital rights organizations add that the court's June decision upholding a Texas law banning minors from websites that host a significant amount of pornography does not also allow states to ban minors from social media.

The court ruled in the Texas matter that states could prohibit teenagers from accessing "explicit" pornography because such material is "obscene as to minors." Material considered obscene is not protected by the First Amendment.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and other groups argue that the Mississippi law, by contrast, bans minors from accessing a broad range of speech that's covered by the First Amendment.

Mississippi officials are expected to respond to NetChoice's petition by Wednesday.