NetChoice’s lawsuit against Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost was filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, which has courtrooms in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton. The suit claims the requirements – which are expected to go into effect starting Jan. 15 – violate the U.S. Constitution’s right to free speech and are too vague.
NetChoice is asking the court to declare all the provisions as unlawful and unenforceable.
Collectively, Ohio’s requirements are called the Social Media Parental Notification Act. The law is part of the 6,000-page state budget bill the legislature passed over the summer. The requirements came at the request of Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who was moved by the experience of the parents of James Wood of Streetsboro in Portage County, who died by suicide after he was sexually extorted online.
Husted, in a statement on Friday afternoon, said the lawsuit was “not unexpected.”
“In filing this lawsuit, these companies are determined to go around parents to expose children to harmful content and addict them to their platforms,” he said. “These companies know that they are harming our children with addictive algorithms with catastrophic health and mental health outcomes. Research has been very clear about what spending excessive time on these platforms is doing to our kids; they are struggling in school, being bullied, their sleep is being disturbed, they are dealing with body image issues, and much more. They need to drop this lawsuit so that we can move forward with the Social Media Parental Notification Act that makes parents part of the equation.”
Yet NetChoice says the requirements won’t ultimately protect kids.
“Ohio lawmakers had good intentions, being concerned about the mental health and well-being of young people,” NetChoice said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “But unfortunately they chose a path that violates constitutional rights and rips away a parent’s authority to care for their child as they find appropriate – all the while violating and the safety and security of ALL Ohioans, especially kids and teens.”
The lawsuit states the new act “would place a significant hurdle on some minors’ ability to access and engage in speech on those websites.” It says the act applies to a large swath of websites. Courts in the past have invalidated laws requiring parental consent on violent video games. And the U.S. Supreme Court has twice rejected laws that require people to provide identification or personal information to access protected speech, the suit states.
The suit notes that the act is unconstitutional because it violates free speech protections for the speaker and content. Specifically, established and widely recognized media outlets are not included in the act. Yet mixed-purpose outlets that cover news and current events, in addition to other types of media, are included in the act, the suit states.
“Such content-based exceptions render the entire statute content-based,” the suit states.
The suit argues that the law is unconstitutionally vague because it would apply to websites that target children or are reasonably expected to be accessed by kids.
“Websites have no way to know what this means,” the suit states.
Husted, in supporting the requirements, said he was trying to combat the crime of “sexortion,” in which an adult poses as a child or teen and encourages a similarly aged user to send an explicit photo through social media. The adult then uses the photo to extort money from the child. The FBI reported 3,000 sextortion victims in 2022, with most victims being boys. More than a dozen cases of sextortion have been linked to the victims dying by suicide, including at least two in Ohio.
Ohio’s requirements state that social media platforms must get permission from parents or guardians by email, mail, fax, a toll-free telephone number or video conference line before opening accounts for users under age 16. The companies must verify the adult’s identity by checking a government-issued ID. Yost’s office is to investigate claims of social media companies not complying with the requirements.
Currently, 11 mostly conservative states, such as Utah and Arkansas, have passed laws or resolutions regarding children on social media, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Laura Hancock covers state government and politics for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.
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