Supreme Court lets Mississippi age-verification law take effect

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block Mississippi’s broad social media age-verification law from taking effect for now, allowing enforcement to proceed while a legal challenge continues in lower courts. In a concise, unsigned order, the court rejected NetChoice’s emergency request for an injunction, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to say the Mississippi measure is likely unconstitutional and that NetChoice had not yet shown it would suffer irreparable harm if the law remained in effect during the litigation.

Mississippi’s law, enacted in 2024, requires social media platforms to obtain express consent from a parent or guardian before a minor can open an account and to implement “commercially reasonable” efforts to verify the user’s age. It also tasks regulated sites with developing strategies to shield young people from harmful material and imposes penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, alongside potential criminal penalties under state law. NetChoice—the tech industry coalition representing major platforms such as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet’s YouTube, and Snap—argued the regime violates the First Amendment by imposing monitoring and...