Tech Industry Groups Want Appeals Court to Uphold Ruling that Blocked Florida’s Restrictive Social Media Law

Pointing to what they called “draconian restrictions,” tech industry groups are urging a federal appeals court to uphold a decision that blocked a Florida law aimed at preventing children from having access to certain social-media platforms.

Attorneys for the groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a 78-page brief Friday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, contending the 2024 law violates First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in June ruled that the law likely violated the First Amendment and issued a preliminary injunction to block it. The state, saying it is targeting addictive platforms that can harm children’s mental health, quickly appealed to the Atlanta-based appeals court.

The industry groups’ brief Friday said the U.S. Constitution “leaves the power to decide what speech minors may access where it belongs: with their parents.”

The law would prevent children under age 14 from opening accounts on certain platforms — which court documents indicate could include platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and YouTube. Parents would have to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to have accounts on the platforms.

“That is akin to restricting all minors from obtaining library cards just because some spend too much time reading books, or restricting all minors from accessing Disney+ because some spend too much time watching cartoons,” the groups’ attorneys wrote. “Such draconian restrictions are especially unwarranted given that parents already have a wealth of tools at their disposal to protect their children on the internet — tools that Florida itself employs when it wishes to restrict minors’ access to ‘social media’ in schools. And to the extent parents do not share Florida’s views about whether or how much their minor children should use ‘social media platforms,’ Florida has no business overriding core parenting decisions.”

But a brief filed last month by Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office said platforms’ “business practices are wreaking havoc on children’s mental health.” The state argued that the law (HB 3) regulates addictive design features, not speech.

“They (the industry groups) claim that HB 3 violates children’s First Amendment rights, but the First Amendment is not a shield for platforms’ predatory business practices,” the state’s brief said. “If platforms insist on using addictive design features to supercharge their advertising revenues, states can regulate the platforms to protect kids, whose still-developing brains make them especially vulnerable to the features.”
The law, which was one of the biggest issues of the 2024 legislative session, does not name platforms that would be affected. But it includes criteria such as whether platforms’ features include infinite scroll and autoplay.

In issuing the preliminary injunction, Walker concluded that the law was not “narrowly tailored” to meet First Amendment legal tests. The injunction did not apply to part of the law that would require platforms to remove children’s social-media accounts if requested by parents.

“Although this court today finds that Florida’s challenged law is likely unconstitutional, it does not doubt that parents and legislators in the state have sincere concerns about the effects that social media use may have on youth, nor does it render parents or the state powerless to address those concerns,” Walker wrote. “For example, this order leaves in place new provisions of Florida law that require covered social media platforms to terminate any account held by a youth under 16 in the state upon the request of a parent or guardian. Instead, like other district courts around the country, this court simply recognizes that the First Amendment places stringent requirements on the state to avoid substantially burdening speech unless the state can show that doing so is necessary to achieve its significant interests.”

The industry groups’ brief Friday said that rather than “restricting access to all ‘social media’ websites, HB 3 singles out websites that minors enjoy most.”

“Whether a website is covered turns in part on how long minors spend on it and whether it employs tools purportedly designed to bring to their attention content they might like,” the brief said. “But the (U.S.) Supreme Court has repeatedly explained that the government may not restrict speech just because it is popular. Otherwise, the government could restrict access to the most popular segments of nearly any medium for constitutionally protected speech. By Florida’s logic, it could restrict access to enticing video games, engaging novels, or bingeworthy TV shows. Burdening protected speech that citizens find especially interesting is especially inconsistent with the First Amendment.”

But Florida got backing last month from 27 states — including Republican and Democratic attorney generals — that filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

“Excessive social media use has led to an alarming spike in adverse mental health outcomes among teenagers,” the brief, authored by Utah Solicitor General Stanford Purser, said. “And it increases youth susceptibility to depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide.”

–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida