Court Halts California Law on Online Safety for Children – One America News Network
By Jonathan Stempel
March 14, 2025 – 7:27 AM PDT
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(Reuters) – A federal judge has ruled that California cannot implement a state law designed to protect children from online content that may pose a mental or physical threat.
U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman announced on Thursday that the trade organization NetChoice was entitled to a preliminary injunction, as it was likely to demonstrate that the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act infringed upon its members’ First Amendment rights to free speech.
NetChoice contended that the law would effectively transform its 39 member companies—including Amazon.com (AMZN.O), Google (GOOGL.O), Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), Netflix (NFLX.O), and Elon Musk’s X—into stateappointed censors, claiming it would lead to heightened censorship online disguised as privacy protection.
The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, which defended the law, did not provide immediate comments in response to inquiries on Friday.
Ambika Kumar, an attorney representing NetChoice, described the law as “a staggering example of unconstitutionally vague and excessive, content-based censorship. We are gratified to see it temporarily halted.”
Signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2022, the California statute mandated that businesses assess whether their online platforms could potentially harm children and take preventative actions prior to launch to mitigate such risks.
Additionally, the law required businesses to estimate the ages of child users and adjust privacy settings accordingly, or set higher privacy standards for all users. Civil penalties could amount to $2,500 per child for neglect and $7,500 per child for intentional breaches.
In her 56-page ruling, Freeman indicated that the law placed considerable burdens on businesses and was not sufficiently targeted to fulfill California’s claimed compelling interest in safeguarding children from bullying, harassment, sexual exploitation, sleep disturbances, and other dangers.
“A regulation that is concerned with the emotional effects of speech on its audience is considered content-based and should therefore be crafted as narrowly as possible,” wrote the judge from San Jose, California. “The state has not demonstrated that this [law] is sufficiently narrowly tailored.”
Freeman had also issued an injunction against the law in September 2023. A federal appeals court partially lifted her injunction last August and mandated a reassessment. The law was expected to be enacted last July.
The case is titled NetChoice LLC et al v Bonta, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 22-08861.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Hugh Lawson
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