Federal courts in Texas, California, and Utah issued preliminary injunctions blocking controversial state laws directed at social networks, focusing on provisions that the courts deemed to negatively affect the platforms’ right to free speech.

A federal court in Texas accepted industry groups’ petition and blocked several provisions of the state’s Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment Act (SCOPE ACT), signed into law in May 2023. The court was skeptical of the law’s mechanism to force platforms to filter ‘harmful content’ presented to minors using social media. According to the court, the term “harmful material” is overly wide and open to interpretation. The term could encompass any content a person considers harmful to minors and society, leading to inconsistent and arbitrary regulation.

The law allows for various subject matters to be deemed “harmful”, including those which glorify self-harm, substance abuse, and sexual harassment. However, one regulator may interpret “substance abuse” as various types of narcotics, and another may extend it to alcohol and tobacco-related products. Other obligations on social media practices regarding minors, such as data collection and targeted advertisement, weren’t blocked and came into effect earlier this month.

In California, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court’s dismissal of X’s (formerly Twitter) request for an injunction against a controversial state law and remanded the case back to the federal district court. California’s law would have forced social media platforms to report to the state about their terms of service and their content-moderation policies and practices, requiring them to explain their definitions of harmful content categories. The court held that the law compels platforms to engage in state-dictated non-commercial speech, which warrants elevated judicial scrutiny. The court then concluded that the law is not narrowly tailored to achieve the purpose of allowing consumers to decide whether they want to consume content on a specific social platform. The court found that the law's provision disproportionately infringes freedom of speech, while the law's objectives can be achieved by less harmful provisions.

A federal court in Utah agreed with an industry group’s petition and issued an injunction against a state bill that would have mandated age verification in social media and limitations on minors’ social media accounts. The plaintiffs asserted that the bill harmed innovation in the state, as well as Utahns’ privacy and free speech rights, essentially conditioning individual internet-use privileges on handing over highly sensitive personal data.