The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Mississippi to enforce its law requiring social media platforms to verify the age of users.
In a brief order with no noted dissents, the justices declined a request from NetChoice, a tech industry group representing companies like Google and Meta, to block enforcement of the law while litigation continues.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted Mississippi’s law “is likely unconstitutional” but explained NetChoice had “not sufficiently demonstrated that the balance of harms and equities favors it at this time.”
“To be clear, NetChoice has, in my view, demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on the merits—namely, that enforcement of the Mississippi law would likely violate its members’ First Amendment rights under this Court’s precedents,” he wrote in a short concurring opinion.
A district court judge blocked Mississippi’s law, which the governor signed in April 2024, from taking effect in July 2024. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision.
“The Act requires covered platforms to take ‘commercially reasonable’ actions to verify a user’s age, obtain parental consent for child users, and adopt a strategy to mitigate the harms to children inflicted on those platforms—sex trafficking, physical violence, incitement to suicide, and more,” Missipi Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote in a court filing.
Co-Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center Paul Taske said this is “merely an unfortunate procedural delay” in a statement.
“Although we’re disappointed with the Court’s decision, Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence makes clear that NetChoice will ultimately succeed in defending the First Amendment—not just in this case but across all NetChoice’s ID-for-Speech lawsuits,” he said.
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