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

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 the Eleventh Circuit found in favor of the state on Thursday, vacating Totenberg's injunction. 

According to the court, while NetChoice could challenge the validity of the Georgia law, the group had not sufficiently argued that enforcement of the law would be unconstitutional. 

"It's not necessarily true that social-media websites engage exclusively in "fully protected" speech. The state contends (and no one seems to dispute) that some platforms, like X and Reddit, do host at least some pornography—which is protected for adults but, importantly, not for minors," the court's ruling reads in part.

The judges found that NetChoice did not adequately address the "full range" of the law's applications, noting that the group "hasn't provided even a full list of its own members to which SB 351 applies."

With the injunction vacated, the law now goes back to district court for additional proceedings.

Attorney General Chris Carr called the ruling a "major win for Georgia families and a huge blow to those who would stand in the way of commonsense solutions to protect our kids."

"We have said before — it shouldn't take lawsuits, investigations or legislation to do the right thing," Carr said. "This is about keeping our children safe from online predators and mental health harms. Nothing is more important."