The rest of the law, including the prohibition on the collection of geolocation data and display of targeted advertising, was allowed to take effect as planned.
A federal judge, citing free speech concerns, has issued a ruling that partially blocks a Texas law designed to protect minors from harmful content online.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued a
ruling on Aug. 30 that blocks the “monitoring and filtering” provisions of the Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act. His decision came just before the law was slated to take effect on Sept. 1.
The SCOPE Act, signed into law last year,
aimed to impose strict requirements on digital platforms, particularly large social media networks. Specifically, it required online platforms to implement age verification methods, restrict data collection and sharing of minors’ personal information, prevent financial transactions by minors, filter content deemed harmful or obscene, and offer parental controls for supervising minors’ online activities.
Pitman’s ruling blocks the law’s monitoring and filtering provisions, siding with tech industry groups that argued that these requirements posed a significant threat to free speech. However, the judge allowed the rest of the law to take effect as planned, including prohibiting the collection of geolocation data and the display of targeted advertising to minors.
“In its attempt to block children from accessing harmful content, Texas also prohibits minors from participating in the democratic exchange of views online,” the judge wrote in the opinion. “Even accepting that Texas only wishes to prohibit the most harmful pieces of content, a state cannot pick and choose which categories of protected speech it wishes to block teenagers from discussing online.”
The ruling results from a
lawsuit filed by tech industry groups, including NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association. The groups argued that the SCOPE Act’s monitoring and filtering provisions were unconstitutionally vague, failed to meet the strict scrutiny standard for content-based laws, and were preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content.
The tech groups also argued that the remaining provisions of the SCOPE Act unconstitutionally regulate a meaningful amount of constitutionally protected speech or otherwise failed strict scrutiny. However, the judge sided with the tech groups only on the monitoring and filtering provisions, blocking their enforcement in Texas while allowing the remaining parts of the law to go into effect, including requiring platforms to disclose how their algorithms rank and filter content for minors.
By partially granting the tech groups’ request for a preliminary injunction, the judge has ordered Texas not to enforce the monitoring and filtering provisions of the law while the legal challenge plays out.
NetChoice and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office did not reply to requests for comment by publication time.
Chris Marchese, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center,
said in a statement when the group’s lawsuit was first filed against Paxton in July, that parents, not the government, should be in charge of children’s online safety.
“The law restricts all Texans’ ability to access and engage in protected speech online by requiring them to hand over their sensitive, personal data first. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s bad policy,” he said. “Parents and guardians—not politicians—should be in charge of their families.”
Pitman’s ruling makes the SCOPE Act the latest state-level internet regulation to be partially blocked by a court. An appeals court recently
handed down a similar decision, upholding the data privacy-related provisions of California’s online child safety law while striking down those that required platforms to assess and mitigate the risks of harmful content to children.
At the federal level, Congress is still working on the Kids Online Safety Act, a measure that aims to establish legal standards to protect minors online while requiring platforms to mitigate online harms more stringently. While the measure has
been praised by online safety advocates, it has also
been criticized because it would increase surveillance and restrict access to information.
