Mississippi Can’t Wall Off Everyone’s Social Media Access to Protect Children

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In what is becoming a recurring theme, Mississippi became the latest state to pass a law requiring social media services to verify users’ ages and block lawful speech to young people. Once again, EFF explained to the court why the law is unconstitutional.

Mississippi’s law (House Bill 1126) requires social media services to verify the ages of all users, to obtain parental consent for any minor users, and to block minor users from being exposed to “harmful” material. NetChoice, the trade association that represents some of the largest social media services, filed suit and sought to block the law from going into effect in July.

EFF submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of NetChoice’s First Amendment challenge to the statute to explain how invasive and chilling online age verification mandates can be. “Such restrictions frustrate everyone’s ability to use one of the most expressive mediums of our time—the vast democratic forums of the internet that we all use to create art, share photos with loved ones, organize for political change, and speak,” the brief argues.

Online age verification laws are fundamentally different and more burdensome than laws requiring adults to show their identification in physical spaces, EFF’s brief argues:

Unlike in-person age-gates, online age restrictions like Mississippi’s require all users to submit, not just momentarily display, data-rich government-issued identification or other proof-of-age, and in some commercially available methods, a photo.

The differences in online age verification create significant burdens on adults’ ability to access lawful speech online. Most troublingly, age verification requirements can completely block millions of U.S. adults who don’t have government-issued identification or lack IDs that would satisfy Mississippi’s verification requirements, such as by not having an up-to-date address or current legal name.

“Certain demographics are also disproportionately bur

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