A federal judge has blocked Louisiana from enforcing a 2023 law requiring social media companies to verify the age of users, obtain parental consent and provide parental controls, saying it violates the First Amendment.
Judge John deGravelles on Monday granted a motion for summary judgment sought by NetChoice — a trade association for social media companies like Nextdoor, Pinterest, Snapchat and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram — and granted a permanent injunction.
The Secure Online Child Interaction and Age Limitation Act, passed in 2023, was designed to keep children safe from online predators and give parents more control over how kids use social media, state officials said.
But, citing numerous rulings from federal appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, deGravelles wrote in his ruling that most social media use, even by minors, is protected by the First Amendment. That means the government can only intervene in narrowly tailored circumstances — and Louisiana’s law was too broad and vague, deGravelles said.
“Ambiguity vests the Division with a worrisome amount of discretion,” he wrote in his 94-page ruling, referencing the Public Protection Division of the Louisiana of Justice, which was responsible for enforcing the law.
Judge deGravelles cited a 2011 Supreme Court ruling on a California law restricting violent video games: While states “possess legitimate power to protect children from harm, that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”
In addition to ruling the law unconstitutional and blocking Louisiana from enforcing the measures, deGravelles also ordered the Attorney General’s office and the Louisiana Department of Justice’s Public Protection Division to pay the plaintiff’s attorney fees — those were the two state agencies listed as defendants in the lawsuit.
“Today, the First Amendment prevailed in Louisiana,” Paul Taske, co-director of NetChoice’s Litigation Center, said in a statement. “The government lacks authority to restrict access to lawful speech it does not like. As the district court recognized, the First Amendment forbids the government from posting ID-checks outside the library door — and the same is true when it comes to social media.”
In a statement of her own, Attorney General Liz Murrill blasted the ruling.
“The assault on children by online predators is an all-hands-on-deck problem,” Murrill said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that the court chose to protect huge corporations that facilitate child exploitation over the legislative policy to require simple age verification mechanisms.”
Murrill said she intends to appeal the ruling.
Debates over online safety
Louisiana lawmakers have recently pursued more rigorous regulations on social media companies in an effort to protect underage users from the detrimental impacts of the online apps.
This year, lawmakers passed a new law requiring app stores to age-verify users. If a user is under 18, the app store must link their account to a parent account, which in turn would need to sign off on any app downloads.
Murrill in August sued Roblox, a popular online video game, alleging the company has failed to take steps to protect children from predators in pursuit of profits.
Act 456 would have restricted targeted marketing ads aimed at Louisiana teens, and prohibited adult users from sending direct messages to underage subscribers unless they were already connected on the respective platforms. The law was also poised to bolster parental controls that guardians could use to monitor their children’s online activity.
The Louisiana Department of Justice’s Public Protection Division would have been able to impose administrative fines up to $2,500 on social media companies if they violated the law. And Murrill’s office could have hit sites with more than a million account holders with civil penalties up to $10,000 if they were caught targeting ads toward teens and children.
NetChoice argued that restricting minors’ access to protected online speech is unconstitutional. It said in its lawsuit that age-verification requirements amount to First Amendment violations because they force users to give up too much personal information just to gain access. The lobby group also claimed Louisiana lawmakers failed to clearly define which social media companies were subject to the regulatory demands.
Taske said Monday’s decision follows permanent injunctions the trade association has won in federal court, preventing similar social media restrictions in Ohio and Arkansas.
“Louisiana’s law would have done more than chill speech,” he said. “It would have created a massive privacy risk for Louisianans like those playing out in real time in countries without a First Amendment, like the UK. Parents, not the government, are best suited to decide how their families use the internet.”