The Supreme Court has sided for now with Mississippi over an internet industry trade group, in an emergency order regarding a state law aimed at protecting children online that the industry argues is unconstitutional.
The high court did not explain its action, which is typical on the so-called shadow docket. But one of the justices shared their thoughts, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing in a concurrence that he thinks the law at issue “is likely unconstitutional,” but he agreed with his colleagues that emergency relief isn’t procedurally proper at this time.
A federal district court judge in Mississippi had granted trade group NetChoice’s motion to block the state from enforcing the law against group members Dreamwidth, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), Nextdoor, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap Inc. (which owns Snapchat), X and YouTube.
Called the Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act, the law requires parental consent and age verification for social media sites, as well as for sites to implement strategies to protect minors from exposure to harmful material. It bears the name of a 16-year-old who died by suicide after an Instagram sextortion scheme.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit lifted the judge’s preliminary injunction, leading NetChoice to appeal to the justices for “emergency relief to maintain the status quo, in which both minors and adults can access and engage in fully protected expression online, free from governmental interference.”
Opposing NetChoice’s application, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch touted the law that she said “protects children from predators.” Fitch called the judge’s injunction against the law “deeply flawed” and in conflict with a recent Supreme Court ruling that backed a Texas law requiring age verification to access sexual content online. She said the Texas case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, involved a law “similarly protecting children online.” The adult entertainment industry raised (and lost) the constitutional challenge in that Texas case. Several outside groups supported NetChoice’s emergency application, including booksellers and publishers who told the justices that the law “will chill the ability of minors to learn about and even purchase new books and to understand, discuss, and analyze current events.” They added that adults face harms, too, citing among other reasons that age verification “may breach adult users’ privacy beyond what some are willing to accept, thereby causing them to forego using the platforms whatsoever.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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