By Jim Saunders ©2024 The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — In a long-anticipated move, two internet-industry groups Monday filed a constitutional challenge to a new Florida law aimed at keeping children off social media platforms.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, whose members include tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, said in a federal lawsuit that the law violates First Amendment rights and that parents should make decisions about children’s social media use.
“While states certainly have a legitimate interest in protecting minors who use such services, restricting the ability of minors (and adults) to access them altogether is not a narrowly tailored means of advancing any such interest,” the 48-page lawsuit said. “In a nation that values the First Amendment, the preferred response is to let parents decide what speech and mediums their minor children may access — including by utilizing the many available tools to monitor their activities on the internet.”
The law (HB 3) was a priority of House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, and became one of the biggest issues of the 2024 legislative session. Industry groups repeatedly signaled they would challenge the constitutionality of the law — with Renner and Attorney General Ashley Moody vowing to defend it.
“You better believe, I am going to fight like hell to uphold this in court,” Moody said in March during an event where Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill.
The law, in part, seeks to prevent children under age 16 from opening social media accounts on some platforms — though it would allow parents to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to have accounts. Children under 14 could not open accounts.
Renner and other key supporters argued that social media companies have created addictive platforms that harm children’s mental health and can lead to sexual predators communicating with minors.
Renner said in March the law focuses on addictive features of the platforms and not on social media content — an approach that he said was designed to withstand a First Amendment challenge. The law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.
“You will not find a line in this bill that addresses good speech or bad speech because that would violate the First Amendment. We’ve not addressed that at all,” Renner, an attorney, said. “What we have addressed is the addictive features that are at the heart of why children stay on these platforms for hours and hours on end.”
But Monday’s lawsuit, filed in the federal Northern District of Florida, said similar laws have been blocked by courts in other states. It said Florida “cannot begin to show that its draconian access restrictions are necessary to advance any legitimate interest it may assert.”
“Parents already have a wealth of tools at their disposal to limit what online services their minor children use, what they can do on those services, and how often they can use them,” the lawsuit said. “Florida may wish that more Floridians shared its own views about whether minors should use ‘social media platforms.’ But while the state may take many steps to protect minors from harm, including by persuading parents to take advantage of tools to limit their minor children’s access to ‘social media platforms,’ it may not take matters into its own hands and restrict access itself.”
The law does not name social-media platforms that would be affected. But it includes a definition of such platforms, with criteria related to such things as algorithms, “addictive features” and allowing users to view the content or activities of other users.
The lawsuit repeatedly referred to sites such as YouTube and Facebook — while also saying the law would not apply to services such as Disney+.
“While the law purports to address ‘addictive features,’ it does not restrict access to all mediums that employ similar features to engage their audience,” attorneys for the industry groups wrote. “The law leaves services like Disney+, Hulu, and Roblox uncovered, even though many minors spend hours on those services each day, and even though they employ the same so-called ‘addictive features,’ like personalized algorithms, push notifications, and autoplay. The state’s only evident justification for restricting access to Facebook and YouTube while leaving many other mediums for speech untouched is the state’s apparent belief that the covered websites deliver content the state thinks is particularly harmful.”
If social-media companies violate the law they could face penalties up to $50,000 per violation. The law also would open them to lawsuits filed on behalf of minors.
The lawsuit, which names Moody as a defendant, seeks an injunction to prevent the restrictions from moving forward. It does not challenge a separate part of the law requiring age verification to try to prevent minors under age 18 from having access to online pornographic sites.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice also have been locked in a long-running legal fight with the state over a 2021 law that placed restrictions on large social media companies. Those restrictions included preventing the platforms from banning political candidates from their sites and requiring companies to publish — and apply consistently — standards about issues such as banning users or blocking their content.
A federal district judge and an appeals court blocked much of the 2021 law on First Amendment grounds, but the U.S. Supreme Court this year sent the case back for further consideration.
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