Yesterday, TechFreedom filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to affirm the district court’s decision blocking enforcement of a Mississippi law that places age-verification requirements on social media. As TechFreedom’s brief explains, this law—HB 1126—and others like it chill online speech and thus violate the First Amendment.

“By eroding online anonymity, age verification chills free speech and free association,” said Corbin K. Barthold, Director of Appellate Litigation at TechFreedom. “Age verification requires identifying information, such as a user’s government-issued ID or a biometric scan of a user’s face. Simply put, Mississippi is pressuring users to submit to invasive data collection.”

“Internet users are increasingly aware of the risks that come with sharing information online,” Barthold continued. “A wide range of experts, politicians, and public intellectuals are sounding the alarm. Some warn that digital surveillance will promote corporate power and destroy personal privacy. Others fear that digital surveillance will promote the monitoring of ‘social credit’ and enable political oppression. Users who hear these messages will think twice before visiting, reading, or speaking at a website that requires age verification.”

“‘Save the children!’ statutes like HB 1126 are political winners, but constitutional losers,” Barthold concluded. “The states pushing these statutes need to reconsider their approach. We need the tools and education that enable parents to set guardrails on their kids’ online experience, not state mandates that infantilize parents, that don’t actually protect kids, and that wreck the Internet for everyone.”

The case is Netchoice, LLC v. Fitch, No. 24-60341 (5th Cir.).

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TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.

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