Supreme Court Upholds Mississippi's Social Media Law for Minors

The Supreme Court just made waves by allowing Mississippi to continue enforcing its new restrictions on children’s access to social media while the legal challenge brought by NetChoice, a tech industry group representing giants like Meta and YouTube, moves forward. This law, House Bill 1126, requires minors to obtain parental consent before creating social media accounts and places strict obligations on platforms to verify user ages and shield kids from harmful content, with the threat of steep civil and criminal penalties. In an unsigned order, the justices declined to block the law for now, despite a lower court finding that it likely violates the First Amendment. Justice Kavanaugh sided with the majority, stressing that the law remains probably unconstitutional but that the Court would wait to weigh in until lower courts issue a more detailed analysis. Many legal observers see this as a signal that the justices are not eager to intervene in the ongoing policy battles over regulating youth online access and social media harms.

Another significant development is the continuing fallout from the Trump v. CASA, Inc. decision, where the Court notably limited federal judges’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions. This ruling means federal courts must now stick to remedies tailored to the parties in a given case, ending the widespread use of universal injunctions that have been favored in hot-button cases, including recent battles over immigration policy and executive orders. As explained by a summary on Restructuring Globalview, the Court leaned on historical legal traditions and the limits of the Judiciary Act of 1789, emphasizing that only class actions conducted under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure can truly offer broad relief.

Legal observers are also still digesting the transformative impact of last year’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling, which overturned the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine. That doctrine had compelled courts to defer to federal agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, but the new stance from the Supreme Court is that courts themselves must determine the single best reading of congressional statutes, reducing the power of agencies to adapt policies in shifting political climates. According to KL Gates, this shake-up has sent shockwaves through administrative law, as regulated industries and government lawyers scramble to adapt to a post-deference world.

Meanwhile, briefs continue to land before the justices in major disputes. CAC notes that the Supreme Court is considering whether judges can grant compassionate release based on their discretion, even if the original sentencing didn’t allow for it, in Fernandez v. United States. Also pending is a case testing if police can enter a home without a warrant on less than probable cause during suspected emergencies, stemming from an incident in Montana where police forcibly entered a home and shot a resident.

Listeners should also be aware of the broader federal court battles that could soon reach the Supreme Court. These involve everything from federal funding freezes on infrastructure projects to the termination of grant programs under new presidential administration priorities, with lawsuits filed challenging the legality and constitutionality of these terminations.

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