ATLANTA—A day before Pornhub.com went dark in the U.S. state of Georgia, a federal district court judge in Atlanta ruled that provisions in a sweeping age verification law that specifically pertain to social media networks would be temporarily blocked on so-called free speech grounds.
Last week, Senior U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia ruled in favor of technology industry trade group NetChoice. Totenberg agrees with the trade group, which features members like Meta Platforms, Google, Amazon and Reddit.
She found that the law would likely violate free speech protections for social media users, including youth.
The state law in question, Senate Bill (SB) 351, or the Protecting Georgia's Children on Social Media Act of 2024, is a sweeping child internet safety measure that requires age verification for pornography websites and mainstream social media networks that might not contain adult content.
Even though SB 351 regulates social media and adult entertainment platforms, NetChoice only sued to protect its members. NetChoice proved successful.
"The court does not doubt the dangers posed by young people’s overwhelming exposure to social media,” Totenberg wrote in her order. “But, in its effort to aid parents, the Act’s solution creates serious obstacles for all Georgians, including teenagers, to engage in protected speech activities and would highly likely be unconstitutional.”
NetChoice's director of litigation, Chris Marchese, praised the ruling, saying, "Free expression doesn’t end where government anxiety begins. Parents—not politicians—should guide their children’s lives online and offline—and no one should have to hand over a government ID to speak in digital spaces.”
Despite the praise of the ruling, Marchese demonstrates that adult entertainment platforms, which share the same digital spaces as the association's mainstream members, are left out in the cold. And it's noted by proponents of age verification laws for all internet platforms, regardless of whether they are mainstream or adult industry-oriented.
Republican state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, the lead legislative sponsor behind SB 351, said that he remains confident that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling dealing with age verification for pornography websites would lead to Judge Totenberg ruling in favor of the state government and Republican-backed child safety proponents.
"Requiring proof of age is an ordinary and appropriate means of enforcing an age-based limit on obscenity to minors," Anavitarte said via reporting by the Georgia Recorder. He referred to how the conservative majority of the high court ruled in favor of the state of Texas in litigation about that state's age verification law and its constitutionality.
The high court ruled 6-3 that age verification laws regulating pornography through age verification legislation were constitutional via intermediate scrutiny. Sen. Anavitarte added, "Based on ... [that] ... ruling at the Supreme Court, Judge Totenberg should be left with no choice but to allow SB 351 to go into effect."
