A law requiring social media and gaming sites to get parental permission before letting any Ohioan younger than 16 onto their platforms can’t go into effect because of its unconstitutionality, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
The Social Media Parental Notification Act passed as part of the state budget in summer 2023 and was set to become law in January 2024. Just days before, NetChoice sued, and the law was put on an indefinite pause through Wednesday’s ruling.
A spokesperson for Attorney General Dave Yost wrote in an email Wednesday his team was “reviewing the decision” to determine whether an appeal was next. Gov. Mike DeWine is encouraging Yost to appeal, according to a statement, which likened the proposal to permission slips for school trips or sports teams.
If Yost does not take action within 30 days, the law gets struck down for good, said Paul Taske, associate director of litigation for NetChoice.
“Even though the legislature’s goal is laudable and desirable, the way they’re going about it is wrong and misguided. It violates the First Amendment, and that’s evident, because there are a lot of less restrictive ways that the government can advance its ends here,” Taske said in an interview.
In NetChoice’s original January 2024 lawsuit, the trade association argued Ohio’s law was too broad and violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Its members include Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, Snapchat parent Snap Inc., and TikTok, among other big names in technology.
U.S. Southern District of Ohio Judge Algenon Marbley largely agreed, writing that he finds the state law “troublingly vague.”
“This Court lauds the State’s effort through the Act to protect the children of this state,” Marbley wrote. “This Court finds, however, that the Act as drafted fails to pass constitutional muster and is constitutionally infirm.”
DeWine, then-Lt. Gov. and now-U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, and other Ohio legislative leaders advocated for the law to protect children’s mental health. NetChoice, however, said its members already have protections in place, and that parents should be the ones deciding for their kids about whether a platform is okay to use.
State lawmakers have said they will try again to pass age verification provisions, this time targeting application stores rather than individual apps.
According to identical House Bill 226 and Senate Bill 167 introduced earlier this month, if an app is “likely to be accessed by children,” app stores would have to obtain parental permission prior to letting Ohioans 16 years or younger download the app. Stores would verify user ages through a user’s device.
Though it hasn’t filed any lawsuits over similar efforts in other states yet, NetChoice sees those efforts as “a much blunter way to restrict access,” Taske said.
