A federal judge in Austin issued an order Friday temporarily preventing Texas from enforcing even more parts of a 2024 law that regulates how children under 18 can use social media — and Attorney General Ken Paxton promptly appealed the decision.
It's the second successful — albeit temporary — legal challenge to the alleged First Amendment violations of Texas House Bill 18 since it was passed. Adam Sieff, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling a victory against government censorship.
“The Court enjoined every substantive provision of the SCOPE Act we challenged, granting even broader relief than its first preliminary injunction,” Sieff said. “We hope this decision will give other states pause before broadly restricting free expression online.”
HB 18 — the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment or SCOPE Act — took effect Sept. 1. It requires social media platforms to make their users register their age, and to restrict what users under 18 see on the sites.
Bill author Rep. Shelby Slawson, R-Granbury, said the bill would give parents more control over how websites collect children’s private information and advertise to children online.
Days before it took effect, though, Judge Robert Pitman of the federal Western District of Texas blocked the parts of the law that enforced “monitoring and filtering” requirements after two trade groups filed a lawsuit. These requirements would make social media platforms track content that “promotes, glorifies, or facilitates” topics like suicide, substance abuse, and grooming and prohibit it for children.
Pitman ruled these provisions were vague and overbroad. He allowed the rest of the law to take effect because the plaintiffs didn’t prove those parts were unconstitutional.
But in Friday’s decision, which stems from a separate Aug. 16 lawsuit, Pitman ruled the law’s targeted advertising, content monitoring and age-verification provisions are likely unconstitutional as well.
The plaintiffs in the Aug. 16 lawsuit are a student-run youth civic engagement organization called Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, a “social-good” advertising company called The Ampersand Group, mental health content creator Brandon Closson and a high school student referred to in court filings as “M.F.” who uses social media for school and to monitor current events. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE, a free speech group, also helped file the case.
In addition to the monitoring and filtering requirements, the plaintiffs challenged HB 18’s statement that social media platforms can’t show children targeted advertising. They also challenged the “content monitoring and age-verification requirement” that requires a social media platform to have users verify that they are 18 or older if one-third of the site's material is deemed harmful or obscene by state law, such as sexual content.
The plaintiffs argue HB 18 not only restricts children’s access to certain ideas online but also burdens adults who want to view content that's legal for adults.
Pitman found the legal concept of “strict scrutiny” applies to HB 18. Strict scrutiny is the standard by which courts review government actions that burden a fundamental right, like freedom of speech. So, Pitman ruled, Paxton must prove the law as it’s written is “the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling state interest.”
But the judge ruled Paxton’s arguments in favor of the law don’t prove that prohibiting targeted advertising or certain speech deemed unsuitable for teens achieves a compelling state interest.
“As with the monitoring-and-filtering requirements, there may exist a compelling state interest in promoting teen mental health by limiting teens’ exposure to certain advertising,” Pitman wrote, “but nowhere does the Court see a specific interest articulated for removing teens’ access to targeted advertising of all kinds, much less a compelling one, as is required.”
The plaintiffs didn’t challenge the part of HB 18 that requires social media platforms to provide tools allowing for parental supervision, among other things. Pitman’s decision isn’t final in the case — rather, it temporarily pauses the state from enforcing the parts of the law that could likely be found to violate the First Amendment once the case is tried on its merits.
Paxton appealed the injunction ruling to the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. KERA News reached out to the attorney general’s office for comment.
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