A US appeals court largely upholds a ruling blocking the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, finding parts of the law likely violate the First Amendment
The court found key parts of the landmark law probably violate the First Amendment, largely siding with an industry challenge.
Washington PostCristiano Lima-Strong
Context & Ripple Effects
California’s code was challenged by a tech industry group that warned it would drive over-moderation of online content. The appeals ruling preserves the lower court’s block while the First Amendment challenge proceeds.
The case sits alongside California’s broader effort to regulate youth-facing online services. Later litigation over SB 976 similarly produced a partial block, though its restriction on addictive feeds for minors was allowed to take effect.
The industry challengers retain a strong preliminary First Amendment position, while California cannot enforce the affected parts of its landmark code.
Second-order effects
California lawmakers and regulators face pressure to draft child-safety rules that target specific product mechanics rather than requirements courts may view as restricting protected expression.
Platforms can point to the ruling when contesting comparable state mandates, raising the legal risk and implementation cost of broad design-code proposals.
Third-order effects
Youth online-safety policy may increasingly be decided provision by provision: measures tied to product features may prove more durable than broad rules affecting content, design, or information practices.
If courts continue to apply strict First Amendment scrutiny, state-led platform regulation could shift toward narrower access-control and feature-based obligations rather than comprehensive design codes.
The trend: US child-safety regulation is moving toward narrower, legally defensible limits on platform features as courts test broad state mandates against First Amendment protections.
The US Ninth Circuit Appeals Court strikes down the heart of CA's speech and tech suppression law CAADCA, and sends it back to the district court to see if anything else if left to survive. I hope AG RobBonta can better advise the legislature and governor to not pass unconstitu…
Breaking news: the Ninth Circuit just ruled that California Age appropriate Design Code likely facially violates the First Amendment. I am pleased with this victory. @NetChoice
The Ninth Circuit panel agreed with @NetChoice that it is likely to succeed in showing “CAADCA's requirement that covered businesses opine on and mitigate the risk that children may be exposed to harmful or potentially harmful materials online facially violates the First
We're going to keep fighting tooth and nail to uphold and further strengthen protections for our kids at every turn. I look forward to seeing a just ruling for them in the lower court.
This is now the 6th ruling @NetChoice has received in our favor in our lawsuits against government rules restricting access to lawful information online, also known as “age-gating”. NetChoice remains committed to empowering families and fostering a positive online experience
Another loss for California's Age Appropriate Design Code. Meanwhile, state lawmakers continue this year to push #socialmedia addiction bills that could also face legal questions
BREAKING: Ninth Circuit Rules for NetChoice & Upholds Californians' Rights Online SAN FRANCISCO—Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in NetChoice's favor in our case against California's unconstitutional, so-called “Age Appropriate Design Code,” NetChoice …
California's Age Appropriate Design Code tried to childproof the internet. But today, the Ninth Circuit held the law “deputizes covered businesses into serving as censors for the State.” That's unconstitutional. Read today's ruling here: https://netchoice.org/... Congrats, [image…
This decision restored the most child-protective parts of the AADC & squarely rejected NetChoice's efforts to invalidate laws to protect kids. This shows the judicial system working the way it's supposed to — making decisions based on evidence, not claims.https://www.washingtonpo…
California leaders touting today's ruling as largely a win, but the injunction that was partially affirmed guts the CAADC's cornerstone child safety provision and punts the rest back to the lower courts
To nobody's surprise... CA's AADC law fails on 1A grounds. The judges during oral args did not hide their concerns around CA's inability to explain away requiring platforms to determine what “harm” means among other things (see 🧵) [image]
We're pleased that the Ninth Circuit reversed the majority of the district court's injunction, which blocked California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act from going into effect. https://oag.ca.gov/... [image]
NetChoice v Bonta, the Cal AADC case, was IMO pretty easy on the substance, and pretty hard in needing to apply the Moody facial/as applied logic to a big sprawling law. The 9th Circuit did a very good job on both. 1/ https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/ ...
The easy part was about the law's requirement to assess risks that were *defined by the kinds of content* children might see, and then mitigate those risks. Obviously that is a speech regulation. The panel gave the AG lawyer a hard time for trying to pretend otherwise. 2/
The fact that this mandate was called a “Data Protection Impact Assessment” and talked about both things at once doesn't change this bottom line. As the court notes (later, in tailoring analysis), lawmakers coulda just made a law about data and not pinned it to speech. 3/ [image]
And as the court also notes, the fact that this content-based law is unconstitutional tells us zip, zero, nada, zilch, bagel, donut about whether ACTUAL privacy laws are OK. You know, the ones that don't require straight-up speech restrictions. 4/ [image]