Appeals Court Halts California Social Media Law Protecting Minors

In this photo illustration, Social media apps are seen on a phone on March 13, 2024, in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

A California court has prevented a state law seeking to protect minors from getting addicted to social media from being enforced while a lawsuit against the regulation remains active.

The SB 976 bill, “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act,” was signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2024. It prohibits social media companies from offering addictive feeds to minors without first securing parental consent. In November 2024, NetChoice, a trade association of internet companies, sued to stop the bill, seeking an injunction to prevent the law from being implemented.

On Dec. 31, 2024, a district court judge prohibited two provisions of the bill from coming into effect. The bill was scheduled to be in force starting Jan. 1. But on Jan. 2, the judge issued a 30-day injunction, blocking the bill from being enforced until Feb. 1.

On Jan. 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted NetChoice’s request for injunctive relief. As a result, SB 976 has been halted from going into effect while NetChoice’s lawsuit proceeds in court, according to a Jan. 28 statement from NetChoice. The Ninth Circuit is now scheduled to hear the case in April.

Paul Taske, associate director of litigation at NetChoice, said the organization was “grateful” for the appeals court decision.

“This law has serious implications for Californians’ First Amendment and digital privacy rights. NetChoice looks forward to stopping yet another online censorship regime from California’s government,” Taske said.

The lawsuit, filed against Rob Bonta in his official capacity as the California attorney general, accused SB 976 of “attempting to unconstitutionally regulate minors’ access to protected online speech—impairing adults’ access along the way.”

NetChoice members include tech giants such as Facebook owner Meta, Amazon, Google, Snapchat owner Snap Inc., Pinterest, and X.

According to the bill, social media platforms would be prohibited from sending alerts to minors during school hours and between midnight and 6 a.m. on school days. The companies would also have to follow certain disclosure requirements, such as publicly revealing the number of minors using their services and the number that received parental approval to access feeds.

Judge Edward J. Davila’s Dec. 31, 2024, decision from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, blocked these provisions of the bill, allowing other parts of SB 976 to go into effect.

In addition to the two provisions, the bill requires platforms to implement settings that allow parents to control how social media is consumed by their children. For instance, parents can restrict their children’s ability to view how many “likes” a specific feed has received.

Platforms are mandated to set minors’ accounts in private mode by default. This only allows users already connected to the minor to view and respond to their content.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office had called the Dec. 31 decision an “early win” in the attempt to protect children while terming the court’s decision to block the two provisions “erroneous.”

“The California Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend this law in court and remains confident in the commonsense statute enacted by both Democrats and Republicans, and supported by teachers, public health professionals, and parents in California,” the office said at the time.

Protecting Minors

Other states have sought to implement laws aimed at protecting minors from the harms of social media. In Utah, such a law was set to go into effect on Oct. 1, 2024, but was blocked by a federal judge in September 2024.

The regulation required social media companies to verify users’ ages and limit the use of their platforms by minors. The lawsuit against the bill was filed by NetChoice.

The judge observed that the law restricted social media companies’ free speech. While the case proceeded, state officials were prohibited from enforcing the bill.

Social media companies have been individually targeted in various lawsuits citing harm to minors. In October 2024, a California district court allowed multi-district litigation involving hundreds of complaints against Meta to move forward.

The complaints were filed by several school districts, personal injury plaintiffs, local government entities, and 34 states. The multi-district litigation alleged that Meta, including Facebook and Instagram platforms, posed a risk to children.

Meta violated consumer protection laws by “designing and deploying platform features it knew were harmful to young users and misleading and concealing from the public its knowledge of this harm,” the lawsuit alleged.

A Meta spokesperson defended the company’s policies at the time, saying they were taking measures to safeguard minors.

“We’ve developed numerous tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new Teen Accounts, a protected experience for teens that automatically limits who can contact them and the content they see,” a spokesperson said.

In October 2024, more than a dozen states sued TikTok, with attorneys general alleging that the company deployed manipulative features to keep minors compulsively engaged on the app.