Lawsuit Hobbles Utah's Plan To Mandate Age Verification Online

"Laws like this don't solve the problems they try to address but only make them worse," says a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression attorney.

Want to make a social media account? If you live in Utah, you soon may have to hand over your ID. Or maybe not.

The Utah Social Media Regulation Act, which was originally set to go into effect in March 2024, aims to restrict minors' access to social media and the kind of content they can encounter once online.

The law would require all social media users to verify their age through privacy-invading methods such as uploading their driver's license, submitting to a facial scan, or providing the last four digits of their Social Security number. Minors must also obtain parental permission before they can create a social media account. Once online, the law would force social media companies to restrict minors' ability to find new content and other accounts and to limit when they can message others on the platforms.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment nonprofit, launched a lawsuit challenging the law.

FIRE's suit argues that the law violates the First Amendment, pointing out that it forces social media companies to restrict users' access to protected expression. Additionally, FIRE argues the law's age verification requirements amount to an unconstitutional prior restraint on free expression.

"What Utah has done, and what other states are doing, is to try to impose sort of a magic bullet solution to the whole question of youth mental health," says Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel at FIRE. "In its rush to address what really is the latest moral panic, the state brushes aside what is a nuanced problem and chooses censorship as the presumptive solution to how it addresses these issues, ignoring the individual differences and the diverse needs of families in the state."

Following FIRE's suit and other legal challenges, Utah's Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, delayed the law's implementation until October 2024. In a legal filing from January 19, the state noted that the Utah State Legislature "is likely to repeal and replace the law." Less than three weeks later, state legislators introduced two bills that proposed minor changes to the law while keeping the considerable restrictions on accounts held by minors and required age verification in order to create an account.

Utah's law is part of a larger trend—Texas, California, Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, Florida, and Montana have all passed similar legislation designed to restrict minors' access to social media or sexually explicit content online. Federal courts have already blocked many of these statutes.

Utah's law is "much like the whole litany of ineffective and unconstitutional measures that courts have consigned to history, including things like protecting young people from movies or comic books, rock music, racy novels, or, most recently, video games," says Corn-Revere. "Laws like this don't solve the problems they try to address but only make them worse. And in the process, it violates everybody's constitutional rights."