Overview

• A three-judge panel rejected most of NetChoice’s First Amendment challenges to California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act.
• The court blocked the requirement that platforms hide like and share counts by default for minors, finding that restriction content based and not the least restrictive means.
• The panel left intact limits on providing personalized, algorithmic feeds to children without parental permission, with further fact development to occur in the trial court.
• The default setting placing minors’ accounts in private mode survived constitutional scrutiny under an intermediate standard.
• A challenge to the law’s age-verification mandate was deemed premature because it does not take effect until 2027, and the case was remanded to Judge Edward Davila, with NetChoice expressing disappointment.