NetChoice Motion Seeks to Block Utah’s 2nd Try at Social Media Regulation

NetChoice seeks a preliminary injunction blocking Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes (R) and Katherine Hass, director of Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection, from enforcing the state’s newly enacted Minor Protection in Social Media Act when it takes effect Oct. 1, said its motion Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00911) in U.S. District Court for Utah in Salt Lake City. The statute “is an unconstitutional restriction on minors’ and adults’ ability to access and engage in protected speech,” it said. It “impermissibly regulates the conditions under which minors and adults can access certain websites and how those websites facilitate, disseminate, and display protected speech,” it said. The entire statute violates the First Amendment and the due process clause “because its definition of what entities are covered is unconstitutional,” it said. Parts of the statute also “independently violate” the First Amendment and the due process clause and are federally preempted under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it said. It’s the second time Utah has enacted a law “violating bedrock constitutional principles of free speech” in attempting to regulate minors’ access to social media, it said. After Utah enacted 2023’s Social Media Regulation Act, NetChoice sued and moved to preliminarily enjoin that law’s enforcement, it said. Utah responded by repealing its 2023 law and replacing it in part with the new statute, it said. But the newly enacted statute “suffers from many of the same flaws ... while at the same time creating new ones,” it said. The statute regulates websites’ ability to publish and distribute speech to minors and speech by minors, it said. It also regulates minors’ ability to produce and receive speech and adults’ access to speech, it said. Minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, said NetChoice. Governments can’t burden adults’ right to access protected speech “in their efforts to regulate the speech appropriate for minors,” it said. The court “should reach the same result as courts across the country that have enjoined similar attempts to regulate online speech,” it said. “Regrettably, Utah’s government has chosen to double down on its misguided laws that thwart parents, undermine the state's dynamic creator economy, jeopardize the data security of its citizens and violate their constitutional rights,” said Chris Marchese, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, in a statement Friday. Utahns, not the government, “should be able to determine how they and their families use technology,” he said.