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SALT LAKE CITY — A federal judge dismissed a claim from a lawsuit by a tech industry group over Utah's social media regulations, saying Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act doesn't preempt the state's prohibitions of certain features on minors' social media accounts.
The decision, announced on Monday, was met with praise from Utah lawmakers while NetChoice, the group that sued Utah late last year, noted that "only one potential argument for one claim was dismissed."
"Today, we secured a significant victory in the fight to protect minors from the harms of social media," said Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, one of the state lawmakers who sponsored the recent regulations. "While we have a long legal battle ahead, today's dismissal was a major hurdle we had to overcome. I hope this work will ultimately help kids in Utah overcome the significant harms posed by current social media practices."
Gov. Spencer Cox, who helped lead the charge against social media platforms last year, called the decision "great news for Utah in our fight to protect kids from the harms of social media."
"This lawsuit has always been and will always be about protecting the First Amendment," said Chris Marchese, the director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. "This law conditions Utahns' right to share and receive information online on their willingness to hand over their most sensitive, personal data, which violates their First Amendment rights."
NetChoice represents the parent companies of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest, and claimed that the Utah law aimed at protecting minors from the alleged harms of social media violates First Amendment protections for speech. SB194, which state lawmakers approved earlier this year, prohibits certain websites from using certain features on accounts owned by minors, including autoplay videos, infinite scrolling and push notifications.
In an amended lawsuit filed after Utah revamped its social media regulations a year after they were first implemented, NetChoice argued that those prohibitions are "unlawful and unenforceable because they are preempted by federal law." The lawsuit cited Section 230, which protects social media companies from liability for content posted on their platforms by users.
In dismissing that claim, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby wrote that the use of autoplay and other features by social media platforms fall outside the scope of content moderation protected by Section 230 and is considered conduct by the platforms themselves — which may be subject to state regulations.
"In sum, the court determines Section 230 does not preempt the provisions of the Act prohibiting the use of autoplay, seamless pagination, and notifications on minors' accounts because they do not impose liability on NetChoice members as the publisher or speaker of third-party content," he wrote. "The liability NetChoice members may face for violating the provisions arises solely from the members' use of the design features — not their use of the features to disseminate third-party content, NetChoice members' own content, or any other type of content."
Utah's law "does not, for example, condition liability on the use of the features to disseminate offensive, inappropriate, or otherwise objectionable third-party content to minors," Shelby continued. "The liability imposed by the Act's design feature prohibitions results only from the conduct of NetChoice's members, not their users."
The NetChoice lawsuit, known as NetChoice LLC v. Reyes, is one of several legal complaints related to Utah's recent fight against social platforms. Several Utah residents and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression have also challenged the state's regulations in court, and state officials have filed lawsuits against individual social media companies directly.
Attorney General Sean Reyes sued Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, in October, claiming the company has contributed to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly using features that addict children to the platforms. The state has also filed two lawsuits against TikTok, accusing the social media giant of operating "in part like a virtual strip club" and allowing for the sexual exploitation of young users.
