NetChoice Sues Ohio to Block Kids' Social Media Law From Taking Effect Jan. 15

An Ohio law requiring age verification to access social media runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution, NetChoice said Friday. The tech industry group asked the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio to block the 2023 law from taking effect Jan. 15. Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R) lambasted the lawsuit as “cowardly but not unexpected.”

Passed as part of the Ohio's 2024-25 budget, the state law requires verifiable parental consent before kids under 16 can access social media (see 2307050064). Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R) championed the measure (see 2303090051).

Requiring Ohioans to submit sensitive personal data to age-verification services before they can share and receive information online violates the First Amendment, NetChoice argued. Also, the state law is too vague because it imposes a parental consent requirement for the internet broadly, the group said. And NetChoice complained about unclear definitions and descriptions in the law.

“The law simply requires parental consent before children under the age of 16 sign up on social media and other online platforms,” Husted responded in a statement Friday. “In filing this lawsuit, these companies are determined to go around parents to expose children to harmful content and addict them to their platforms. These companies know that they are harming our children with addictive algorithms with catastrophic health and mental health outcomes.” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) didn’t comment by our deadline.

Websites that Ohio seeks to regulate "join a long line of media that have faced calls for regulation based on fears that they expose minors to harmful speech,” including dime novels, comic books and video games, NetChoice wrote in the lawsuit. The group cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 opinion about violent video games in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which said states’ power to protect minors “does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” The Supreme Court also “has rejected laws that require people to provide identification or personal information to access protected speech,” NetChoice said. It noted that another district court stopped a similar kids’ social media law Arkansas in September (see 2309010024).

“The First Amendment problems are heightened here because the Act is unconstitutionally both content-based and speaker-based and baldly discriminates among online operators based on the type of speech they publish,” added NetChoice. Also, the Ohio law is "unconstitutionally vague,” applying “to websites that ‘target[] children, or [are] reasonably anticipated to be accessed by children,’” the group said. “Websites have no way to know what this means.”

“Families equipped with educational resources are capable of determining the best approach to online services and privacy protections for themselves,” said NetChoice Litigation Center Director Chris Marchese. “We will fight to ensure all Ohioans can embrace digital tools without their privacy, security and rights being thwarted.”