A federal judge on Monday prevented Ohio from implementing a recent law that requires social media corporations, including Meta Platform’s Instagram and ByteDance’s TikTok, to acquire parental consent before allowing children under 16 to use their platforms.
Chief US District Judge Algenon Marbley in Columbia agreed with the tech industry trade group NetChoice that the law violated minors’ free speech rights under the Structure’s First Amendment.
It marked the newest court decision blocking a state’s law designed to guard young people online as federal and state lawmakers look for methods to address rising concerns in regards to the dangers posed by social media to the mental health of children.
Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, had argued that the state’s Social Media Parental Notification Act, which the legislature passed in July, was a sound measure aimed toward protecting minors from damage to their mental health and sexual predators.
But Marbley agreed with NetChoice, whose members include TikTok, Elon Musk’s X, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, that the law was “not narrowly tailored to those ends.”
“Foreclosing minors under sixteen from accessing all content on web sites that the Act purports to cover, absent affirmative parental consent, is a breathtakingly blunt instrument for reducing social media’s harm to children,” he wrote.
Monday’s ruling put Ohio’s law on hold indefinitely while the litigation continues after the judge last month issued an order that temporarily blocked it from taking effect on Jan. 15 as scheduled.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, called the ruling disappointing. He cited “overwhelming evidence that social media has a negative effect on the mental health of minors, including increases in depression and suicide-related behavior.”
“For the reason that federal courts are interpreting federal constitutional law as stopping the state of Ohio from protecting Ohio’s children, then Congress must act to guard our country’s children,” he said in an announcement.
NetChoice last yr won court rulings blocking an identical social media parental consent law in Arkansas and a children’s digital privacy law in California.
It’s difficult restrictions adopted in Utah as well.