Overview
- A divided 2-1 panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower-court injunction on June 18, ordering the block on Ohio’s 2023 Social Media Parental Notification Act to be vacated so enforcement can resume.
- The statute requires websites reasonably likely to be used by under-16s to run age verification under an 11-factor test and obtain verifiable parental consent before minors may create or use accounts.
- Judge Eric Clay wrote the majority opinion that the parental-consent requirement is a narrowly tailored, marginal burden to protect children from harms such as addictive design and unsupervised assent to terms of service.
- Judge Kevin Ritz dissented, warning the law likely restricts minors’ protected speech and is vague about how it will prevent the harms the state cites, and NetChoice has said it will continue legal challenges toward the Supreme Court.
- The decision follows global moves to limit under-16 access and raises practical and privacy trade-offs because effective age checks often require intrusive verification or behavioral inference that can be hard to enforce and easy to circumvent.