Utah’s first-of-its-kind social media law cleared one legal hurdle after a district court judge dismissed a portion of a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.
In a July 22 decision, Judge Robert Shelby ruled Utah’s requirements that social media companies verify the ages of their users and disable certain features like autoplay and push notifications is not preempted by the federal Communications Decency Act.
The oft-argued over Section 230 of the 1996 law states “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In short, that means internet companies cannot be held liable for content posted by their users.
NetChoice — the trade organization representing TikTok, YouTube owner Google and Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta — argued the features that Utah sought to restrict fell under that safe harbor.
Judge Shelby disagreed, writing Utah’s law does not “impose liability on NetChoice members as the publisher or speaker of third-party content. The liability NetChoice members may face for violating the provisions arises solely from the members’ use of the design features.”
In other words, Utah didn’t target content, so Section 230 didn’t apply.
The groundbreaking regulation of how minors interact with social media came in response to what Utah leaders characterized as a youth mental health crisis. Originally passed in 2023, those laws were scaled back earlier this year after NetChoice brought its case against the state.
One of the architects of the law, Rep. Jordan Teuscher, said the changes “absolutely” led to the court’s decision.
“It validated all of the hard work that we’ve put into this legislation to really ensure that we weren’t going after the content, but really the design features of these social media platforms,” he said. “It doesn't matter what the content is on the platform — It could be puppies and rainbows all day — but because of the algorithms that you're using, because of the way that you've designed your product, that is what's causing harm to the minor.”
Only one claim in the NetChoice lawsuit was dismissed. The organization is still challenging the law’s constitutionality, saying it violates the First Amendment.
In a statement, NetChoice Litigation Center Director Chris Marchese promised to move forward with the rest of their case, saying Utah’s law “conditions Utahns’ right to share and receive information online on their willingness to hand over their most sensitive, personal data.”
“Laws like Utah’s also come at great risk to kids’ cybersecurity, as government mandates to hoard children’s data will put them at far greater risk of attack and abuse from scammers and predators,” Marchese said.
“Taking away parents’ and guardians’ authority and choice while forcing them to hand over personal information to access information is dangerous and unconstitutional.”
According to Teuscher, lawmakers have tried to carefully craft a law that does what it sets out to accomplish while still protecting free speech.
“There's First Amendment concerns, there's parental concerns, there's privacy concerns,” he said. “There are a lot of issues when trying to regulate [social media], but we know the harms that are being caused and we knew as a state we needed to take some action.”
With the rest of NetChoice’s lawsuit still active, Teuscher admitted there are still “a lot of steps along the way” that need to be resolved, including those related to the First Amendment.
“It’s definitely not over, but we're feeling really hopeful that ultimately we'll be able to prevail.”
Utah’s social media law is set to take effect on Oct. 1, 2024.
