FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (Legal Newsline) - Arkansas' blocked law targeting youths on social media is now officially toast, a federal judge says.
Judge Timothy Brooks had already granted a preliminary injunction against a law that would require social media companies to inspect documents like the driver's licenses of would-be users to verify their ages.
On March 31, he went a step further in granting the motion for summary judgment of NetChoice, an internet trade association that represents members like Facebook, Instagram, X and Snapchat.
"Because Act 689 abridges the First Amendment rights of Arkansans who use social media and contains terms too vague to be reasonably understood, NetChoice members and their users will suffer irreparable harm if the Act goes into effect," Brooks wrote.
"Because it is unclear which NetChoice members are subject to regulation, some members would be forced to choose between risking enforcement penalties - civil and criminal - and implementing age-verification requirements that burden their users' First Amendment rights."
Companies clearly under command of Act 689 would be "pressed into service as the private censors of the State," he added.
NetChoice's lawsuit claimed the Social Media Safety Act is unconstitutional, even if its intentions are honorable. The law hopes to prevent exploitation of minors on social media.
However, it makes a "social media company" hire a third-party vendor that would verify users' ages through the uploading of a specified form of identification. Minors would be denied an account and prevented from using the platform without parental consent.
Without the law, state Attorney General Tim Griffin has turned to the Deceptive Trade Practices Act to pursue litigation against Google and Alphabet over the safety of YouTube. He filed suit in September claiming YouTube has designed its platform to be addictive to children and teens.
In 2023, he sued Facebook, Instagram, Meta and TikTok over safety concerns and has also joined a coalition of 42 state attorneys general hoping for a U.S. Surgeon General warning label on all algorithm-driven social media.
NetChoice, meanwhile, has been successful in challenging age-restriction laws targeting social media around the country. Brooks first stopped the Arkansas law in 2023.
The law defines a social media company as an online forum that allows an account holder to create a public profile and upload or create posts or content for "the primary purpose of interacting socially with other profiles and accounts."
Snapchat said it was told by AG Griffin that it was exempt from the law, but a co-sponsor of the legislation and Arkansas' own expert witness said it wasn't.
"The State is correct that courts, not experts, are tasked with interpreting statutes," Brooks wrote.
"However, due process requires that the legislature, not the Court, provide 'explicit standards for those who apply the law' so that 'arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement' may be avoided.
"Here, three people possessing, the Court assumes, at least ordinary intelligence - and ostensibly all on the enforcement side - cannot agree whether the Act covers Snapchat. Snapchat is right to be worried about the risk of litigation."