Federal judge blocks Nebraska’s social media age verification law from going into effect in July

A federal judge ruled that multiple components of a Nebraska law aimed at protecting children online likely violate the First Amendment and blocked them from going into effect in July.

NetChoice, an association of social media companies including TikTok and Meta, sued Nebraska last month over the state’s Parental Rights in Social Media Act, or LB 383, which was passed by the Legislature in 2025. The association filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the law from going into effect, which was partially granted on Saturday by Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Gerrard.

In his opinion granting the injunction, Gerrard said the provisions of the law requiring age verification for social media account creation and requiring minors to have “express parental consent” to create an account likely violate the First Amendment rights of both the users and the social media companies.

Gerrard did allow one key component of the law to be enforced: A provision requiring social media companies to create a dashboard where parents can access and monitor all posts, interactions and private messages from a minor’s account. Since the provision is “narrowly tailored to alleviate the identified harms of unmonitored social media activity by minors,” Gerrard said, it likely does not “offend the Constitution.”

In oral and written arguments, attorneys defending Nebraska argued that the law’s scope fell outside of First Amendment scrutiny since it only targets a minor’s ability to create an account and does not directly regulate their speech on the platform. Gerrard disagreed.

“By requiring age verification and parental consent to create an account, LB 383 has a direct impact on several protected First Amendment activities and materials,” Gerrard wrote. “NetChoice has indicated account creation is necessary before a user can fully engage in the full range of expressive activity available on social media platforms. It is expressive, communicative conduct inherent to a social media platform that triggers the law's restrictions, thereby implicating the First Amendment rights of both NetChoice members and their users.”

Gerrard also had to decide which level of scrutiny applied to his analysis of the law’s constitutional implications. Laws that regulate First Amendment conduct are typically presumed unconstitutional and can only be justified if they survive strict scrutiny by the government proving that the law is “narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.”

In this case, the compelling state interest is mitigating the mental health impacts of social media access on minors. Gerrard found that research and evidence supports Nebraska’s contention that “increased social media use has caused a ‘mental health crisis’ in Nebraska and other states.” Attorneys defending Nebraska’s law focused on the addictive nature of “algorithmic, personalized feeds” and the impacts of those algorithms on minors.

Gerrard found that argument is unlikely to survive strict scrutiny.

“On the whole, the law is not tailored to solve the identified problem: increased use of social media platforms, and some platforms' utilization of 'addicting' features, driving a mental health crisis among adolescents,” he wrote. “Rather, NetChoice has demonstrated it is likely to prevail in showing the unconstitutional applications of LB 383 outweigh the constitutional ones because LB 383 too broadly restricts minors' ability to access and engage in protected speech, even where speech does not pose the identified risk of harm.”

Most major social media companies are members of NetChoice, which frequently launches legal challenges against state laws that restrict access to social media platforms. Its members include Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram; TikTok; Snapchat; X (formerly Twitter); Reddit; Google; and YouTube.

NetChoice claimed in the initial complaint that the “severe burdens” imposed by verifying the age of every user and their parents could force some social media companies to “restrict Nebraskans from accessing their websites altogether.

A preliminary injunction is not a permanent fix, and NetChoice will likely seek a permanent order blocking the law from going into effect. NetChoice and the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.