• by Wendy Davis , October 9, 2025

Tech industry organizations as well as digital rights watchdogs are urging a federal appellate 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.

The state law "imposes sweeping, content-based restrictions on online social media websites, including intrusive age-verification, parental-consent, and content-monitoring mandates," six groups including TechNet, the Chamber of Progress and Computer & Communications Industry Association write in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Thursday with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

"These requirements violate the First Amendment and threaten irreparable harm to both digital service providers and users," the industry groups add.

Mississippi House Bill 1126 took effect in August, prompting Bluesky to block access to people whose IP addresses indicated they were in Mississippi.

In addition to requiring parental-consent for social media, that 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 First Amendment typically prohibits the government from banning lawful speech -- even if that speech is considered "harmful."

The tech industry-funded organization NetChoice sued to block enforcement, arguing the statute violates the First Amendment.

In June, U.S. District Court Judge Halil Ozerden in the Southern District of Mississippi agreed with NetChoice and prohibited the state 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."

Mississippi appealed and, in July, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily lifted the injunction.

NetChoice then urged the Supreme Court to reverse the 5th Circuit on an emergency basis and reinstate Ozerden's injunction.

The Supreme Court denied that request in August, effectively allowing Mississippi to enforce the law while NetChoice's challenge proceeds in the lower courts. At the time, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a written concurrence that Mississippi's law is "likely unconstitutional," but that NetChoice "has not sufficiently demonstrated that the balance of harms and equities" warrants an emergency order.

Last month, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued to the 5th Circuit that Ozerden's injunction should be lifted on a more permanent basis.

Among other arguments, she says the injunction "blocks an important state law that protects children from predators."

"Requiring age verification and parental consent are common ways for states to protect minors," Fitch argues.

She also says the Mississippi law should be upheld for the same reason the Supreme Court recently upheld a Texas law banning minors from websites with a significant amount of pornography.

The Supreme Court ruling in the Texas case shows that states can regulate websites "to protect children from harms that the state has the power to regulate," she argues.

NetChoice last week opposed Fitch's request and urged the appellate court to restore Ozerden's injunction.

TechNet and other industry groups call the law "a classic content-based speech regulation that burdens digital service providers," adding that it effectively forces social media platforms "to act as the state’s censors."

"When legislation suppresses lawful speech or compels self-censorship, it does more harm than good and violates the First Amendment. The Act crosses that line," the organizations contend.

Digital rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation argue in a separate friend-of-the-court brief that the age-verification mandate will violate adults' right to access speech, if they are unable or unwilling to verify their ages.

The groups also say the parental-consent mandate violates minors' rights to access lawful speech, noting that the Supreme Court in 2011 struck down a California law that would have prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors, without parental consent.

They add that the requirement to filter certain material also violates the First Amendment.

"Any content with a comment section can 'facilitate' bullying by providing a way for users to communicate and interact with each other online," the groups write.

"Similarly, content that 'facilitates' or 'promotes' self-harm or substance abuse could reach anything that might cause a young person deep anguish, from reporting about school shootings, war, and teen suicide, to minors’ own personal updates about deaths in the family, rejection from a college, or a breakup," they add. "All of that is protected speech, and much of it is undeniably valuable."

Those groups also dispute the argument that the Supreme Court decision upholding Texas's law banning minors from pornography sites means the Mississippi law is also valid. They write that the court's decision in the Texas matter hinged on the idea that minors have no First Amendment right to access pornography because it's considered "obscene as to minors." (The First Amendment doesn't protect obscenity.)

By contrast, they argue, minors have a First Amendment right to access non-pornographic speech "including the plethora of political, religious, artistic, and educational content available on social media."

The 5th Circuit hasn't yet set a date for a hearing in the matter.