(The Center Square) – A federal court partially blocked a California law restricting social media access for minors, blocking its ban on social media notifications for minors during certain hours and ruling that personalized feeds that are built from users’ actions are not protected editorial content under the First Amendment.
The court also ruled that the question of the law’s social media age verification requirement – which opponents say could include government identification and thus erode social media anonymity – is not yet ripe, as the provisions do not take effect until 2027 and the state is yet to issue guidelines to challenge.
Technology trade association NetChoice, which emerged victorious in the Supreme Court in Moody v. Netchoice earlier this year, filed its lawsuit against SB 976, California’s social media age verification law, in November.
SB 976 requires social media companies to get parental consent for providing personalized feeds for minors, and for minors to default to being allowed to use personalized feeds on social media for only one hour per day, a feature that can be changed with parental approval. It also blocks notifications for minors during the school day while school is in session, and at night, and creates default settings for minors that hide likes and keep profiles private.
Notably, the law also requires social media companies to require users to prove they are not children starting in 2027, which has drawn concern from free speech advocates and technology trade groups who argue the provision would effectively end anonymous speech on major social media sites.
The preliminary injunction blocked the SB 976 provisions banning social media notifications for minors during certain hours – noting it’s unfair that other apps such as ESPN could send notifications during those times. The court also ruled companies’ required disclosure of how many minors are on each platform does not serve a compelling interest.
Federal district court judge Edward Davila said that while NetChoice had made a compelling argument about the potential impact on free speech of intensive age verification requirements to use social media, that matter is not yet fit for review until the state issues specific regulations and protocols.
“While adults might be reluctant or unable to provide photo identification, age assurance that runs in the background may discourage few if any adults from accessing speech,” wrote Davila. “All this is important when assessing whether SB 976’s age assurance requirement is properly tailored to achieve California’s goal of protecting children. And none of this can be developed in the factual record until Defendant issues regulations on age assurance.”
Davila also said that NetChoice failed to prove that Moody’s First Amendment protections apply to personalized feeds. While Moody protected social media companies’ content moderation decisions as editorial speech, Davila found that algorithms that simply respond to user behavior without expressing a platform’s values may not qualify for the same protection.
“We appreciate the court’s expedited review of this censorship law, and while we are pleased that Judge Davila agreed that California’s notification prohibitions and compelled disclosure provisions are likely unconstitutional, we are concerned that the court undercut key speech protections for social media outlined by the Supreme Court in its ruling in NetChoice’s cases earlier this year,” Paul Taske, NetChoice associate director of Litigation, told The Center Square. “We will continue to challenge this additional, unconstitutional censorship law from California and ensure free expression is fully protected on the internet.”
The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who was tasked with defending the legislation, celebrated the decision, promising to continue defending the law when it eventually goes to trial.
“Although the court today upheld most of SB 976, it blocked two portions of SB 976 from taking effect tomorrow on free speech grounds — this aspect of the decision is erroneous because no part of SB 976 regulates speech,” wrote Bonta’s office in a statement. “The California Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend this law in court and remains confident in the commonsense statute enacted by both Democrats and Republicans, and supported by teachers, public health professionals, and parents in California.”
It’s still unclear how California will require social media companies to verify users’ ages, and verify which individuals are users’ parents, which will likely be the topic of future lawsuits as the state rolls out its regulatory requirements.
