Appeals court removes injunction blocking Georgia's social media age verification law – CBS News

Appeals court removes injunction blocking Georgia’s social media age verification law  CBS News

A federal appeals court will allow a Georgia law requiring age verification for social media accounts to go forward after a legal battle that has lasted more than a year.In 2024, Georgia lawmakers passed SB 351. The law would require social media services to make "commercially reasonable efforts" to verify someone's age, without anyone who can't be verified being treated a minor.Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service, and social media companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children.NetChoice, a technology industry trade group, sued in federal court in Atlanta to overturn the law before it was set to take effect on July 1, 2025.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg then sided with the group, blocking the law until there was a full ruling on the issue."The state seeks to erect barriers to speech that cannot withstand the rigorous scrutiny that the Constitution requires," Totenberg wrote in her 2025 ruling, finding the law restricts the rights of minors, chills the right to anonymous speech online and restricts the ability of people to receive speech from social media platforms.While the law has remained in legal limbo since Totenberg's ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for