(The Center Square) – Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals defending a law that requires age verification for social media users.
The law requires companies that provide content deemed inappropriate for minors to use age-verification software. Anyone who violates it could be charged with a Class C felony.
NetChoice, a trade organization representing apps like Facebook and Instagram, sued Tennessee over the Protecting Children from Social Media Act, saying the law curbs free speech. A federal District Court judge denied NetChoice’s motion for an injunction.
Skrmetti said the court made the right decision in allowing the law to be enforced.
“Tennessee’s law requires social media companies to implement common-sense features that let parents protect their kids,” Skrmetti said. “The law does not control what anyone can say or not say online. The harms social media causes kids are well-documented.”
Skrmetti said in his brief that children’s constant access to social media has fueled a crisis.
“Social media has devastated kids’ mental health, stunted their development, and exposed them to pornography and sexual predators, with little to no parental oversight,” Skrmetti said in the brief. “All the while, social-media platforms profit from minors’ use of their platforms through contracts granting them rights over account holders’ personal information.”
The attorney general is asking the court to allow oral arguments in the case.
NetChoice has sued other states over similar laws.
A U.S. District Court judge granted a preliminary injunction of a Georgia law in June, halting enforcement of the law in that state that also required age verification before accessing social media sites.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg said in the 50-page ruling that the Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act of 2024 is constitutionally infirm.
“The State seeks to erect barriers to speech that cannot withstand the rigorous scrutiny that the Constitution requires, and the inapt tailoring of the law – which is rife with exemptions that undermine its purpose – dooms its constitutionality and calls into question its efficacy,” Totenberg wrote in her decision. “The Act curbs the speech rights of Georgia’s youth while imposing an immense, potentially intrusive burden on all Georgians who wish to engage in the most central computerized public fora of the twenty-first century.”
The Center Square was unsuccessful prior to publication getting a comment from NetChoice.
Paul Taske, Netchoice associate director of litigation, previously said the company remained confident that the Tennessee law would be struck down.
