Report from MediaPost
In Brief – A panel of the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Ohio may enforce its 2023 social media parental-consent law, reversing a lower court decision that had blocked the measure as unconstitutional. The law requires teens under 16 to have parental permission to create accounts on social media platforms. In 2024, and again in 2025, a federal district judge agreed with industry group NetChoice that the law infringed on the First Amendment rights of minors and digital platforms. On appeal, Judges Eric Clay and Alice Batchelder sided with the State of Ohio that NetChoice lacked standing to assert the constitutional rights of minors and that the law merely regulates minors’ ability to enter contractual relationships.
Context – Last summer, the Supreme Court ruled that states could require porn websites to use age verification tools to confirm that users are adults, with six justices saying that ID checks were a long-established tool that warranted First Amendment “intermediate scrutiny”. Meanwhile, states have been passing laws regulating how social media platforms serve teens. Initially, most were blocked by federal judges applying “strict” First Amendment reviews. However, soon after the High Court’s decision on porn age checks, a federal appeals court panel in the US 5th Circuit allowed Mississippi’s teen-focused social media law to stand during litigation, and the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal. At the time, Justice Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion summarizing why all the similar social media laws had been blocked and why he suspected Mississippi’s would eventually be blocked as well. Nevertheless, appeals panels of the 11th and 9th circuit’s later allowed similar laws to stand in Florida and California. They are now joined by the 6th. The issue is going to reach the Supreme Court. While the precedents backing the First Amendment rights of minors seem clear, the justices have been squirrely on internet cases, so who knows how this all plays out. Meanwhile, absent a First Amendment barrier, many countries are imposing blanket age limits on social media.