Utah law restricting youth social media use blocked by judge

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - A federal judge has blocked Utah from enforcing a new law aimed at protecting the mental health of young people by requiring social media platforms to verify users' ages and impose restrictions on minors' accounts.

Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction after concluding that tech industry trade group NetChoice was likely to succeed in establishing that the law violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment by unduly abridging the social media companies' free speech rights.

The decision marked the latest in a string of court rulings blocking laws deigned to protect young people online that states enacted to address rising concerns about the dangers posed by social media to the mental health of children.

"The court recognizes the state's earnest desire to protect young people from the novel challenges associated with social media use," Shelby wrote.

But he said, "even well-intentioned legislation that regulates speech based on content must satisfy a tremendously high level of constitutional scrutiny," and that Utah's law did not.

Utah's attorney general did not respond to a request for comment.

Republican Governor Spencer Cox signed the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act into law in March. The measure partially replaced an earlier social media regulation law the state repealed after NetChoice sued to block it as well.

The new law was set to take effect on Oct. 1 and required social media companies to adopt age verification systems to determine if a user was a minor and required the companies to impose special privacy settings for accounts used by children.

NetChoice, whose members include Meta Platforms' Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet's YouTube, Snap Inc's Snapchat and Elon Musk's X, argued that the law imposed unjustified, content-based restrictions on the companies' speech.

Shelby said the group's argument was "persuasive," saying the law drew distinctions between types of websites yet only imposed content-based restrictions on how social media companies can construct and operate their platforms and not others.

Chris Marchese, director of NetChoice's litigation center, in a statement said the ruling "highlights just how flawed this law is at its core," and that his group was looking forward to having it and similar laws nationally permanently struck down.

NetChoice has won court rulings blocking similar laws in full or part in Arkansas, California, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Mark Porter)