Judge blocks Georgia’s social media age verification law, citing free speech concerns
Atlanta – Georgia has become the last state when a federal judge has blocked a law requiring age verification for social media accounts.
As in seven other states where such laws were blocked, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the Georgia law breaks the rights to freedom of expression.
The decision of the American district judge Amy Totenberg means that the Georgia measure, which was adopted in 2024, will not have effect next week as planned. Instead, Totenberg granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law until there is a complete decision on the issue.
The Georgia law would oblige certain social media suppliers to take “commercially reasonable” measures to verify the age of a user and demand that children under the age of 16 obtain a parental authorization for accounts. It was challenged by Netchoice, a commercial group representing online companies.
“The State seeks to erect obstacles to speeches that cannot resist the rigorous maintenance that the Constitution needs,” wrote Totenberg, noting that the law restricts the rights of minors, cools the right to anonymous online discourse and restricts the ability of people to receive the discourse of social media platforms.
Georgia will appeal, said a spokesperson for the prosecutor General Chris Carr on Thursday.
“We will continue to defend common sense measures that empower parents and protect our children online,” spokesman Kara Murray said in a statement.
Parents – and even some adolescents themselves – are increasingly concerned about the effects of the use of social media on young people. Law supporters said they were necessary to help slow the explosive use of social media among young people, and what researchers say is an associated increase in depression and anxiety. Totenberg said that social media concerns harm children are legitimate, but do not prevail over the constitutional violation.
Totenberg wrote that Netchoice members would be irreparably injured by law. It rejected the arguments of the State according to which the group should not obtain a temporary compensation, because it had delayed the filing of its prosecution of one year and because the State would be required to give a notice of 90 days before enforcing the law.
“Freedom of expression does not end where the anxiety of the government begins,” said the director of the Netchoice dispute, Chris Marchese, in a statement. “Parents – not politicians – should guide the lives of their children online and offline – and no one should have a government identity document to speak in digital areas.”
It is the ninth state where Netchoice blocked a law on the use of social media by children. In Arkansas and Ohio, federal judges definitively canceled the laws. In addition to Georgia, measures are also suspended in California, Florida, Mississippi, Texas and Utah. Louisiana has agreed not to apply its law while disputes occur. It was only in Tennessee that a federal judge refuses to temporarily block a law, concluding that Netchoice had not proven that people would be irreparably injured if the law was not blocked before the trial.
Georgia had argued that the law was aimed at protecting children in a dangerous place, comparing it to ban them from bars serving alcohol instead of restricting their speech.
