A federal appeals court handed parents a major win Thursday, ruling 2-1 that Ohio can enforce its law requiring children under 16 to get parental consent before signing up for social media apps. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found the Social Media Parental Notification Act constitutional, reversing a lower court that had blocked the law for more than two years.
The ruling marks the first time a federal appeals court has sided with a state against NetChoice, the tech industry trade group that represents TikTok, Snapchat, Meta, and other Silicon Valley heavyweights. NetChoice had previously defeated similar laws in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia, a winning streak that ended Thursday in Cincinnati.
The Hill reported that the divided panel sent the case back to the lower court with instructions to vacate the enforcement block, clearing the way for Ohio to begin requiring age verification and parental permission on covered platforms.
Judge Eric Clay wrote the lead opinion. His reasoning was direct: the Ohio law asks only that parents, not the government, not a tech company, decide whether their child can agree to a platform's terms of service.
"At bottom, the Act imposes a parental consent requirement. That requirement constitutes a marginal burden that precisely targets the multi-faceted problem that Ohio has identified: Children's unsupervised assent to terms and conditions for use of platforms that take advantage of and harm them."
Judge Alice Batchelder concurred separately, swatting away NetChoice's argument that the law was unconstitutionally vague. Her line was spare: "a statute is not vague just because it has a wide berth."
One judge dissented. The dissenting judge's name and reasoning were not included in available reporting.
As Just The News reported, the panel also noted the documented harms social media poses to minors, stating that "for young people, who are at a pivotal stage in cognitive development, social media has been linked to issues with sleep, anxiety, body dysmorphia, depression, and bullying."
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the Social Media Parental Notification Act into law in July 2023. It was tucked inside an $86.1 billion state budget bill. The measure requires social media and gaming app companies to verify user ages and obtain parental permission before letting children under 16 onto their platforms. It also mandates that companies provide privacy guidelines so families know what content will be censored or moderated on a child's profile.
At the signing, then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, now a U.S. senator, said social media was "intentionally addictive" and harmful to kids. Ohio has been at the forefront of conservative policy efforts on multiple fronts, including a recent push to lock voter photo ID into the state constitution permanently.
NetChoice filed suit in 2024, arguing the law was overly broad and violated the First Amendment. A lower court agreed and blocked enforcement. The law sat dormant for more than two years while families waited.
Thursday's ruling flipped that outcome. The Sixth Circuit held that NetChoice failed to show the law was unconstitutional on its face, the standard required to block a statute before it ever takes effect.
Republican Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson did not hold back after the decision came down.
"The court agreed that parents, not social media companies, should get a say in what kids see online. We have an obligation to keep our children safe, and today, the most dangerous place for our kids is the internet. This decision gives parents the tools to be involved and provide oversight."
Wilson's framing is worth noting. He did not cast the law as a government crackdown on speech. He cast it as a restoration of parental authority, authority that tech companies had quietly stripped away by letting minors click "I agree" with no adult in the loop.
That framing mirrors a broader pattern in recent federal appeals court rulings where judges have drawn sharper lines around individual and family rights against institutional overreach.
The tech lobby was not conceding. Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, issued a statement signaling the group would press on.
"An unconstitutional law protects no one, and we remain focused on ensuring the First Amendment rights of Ohioans are protected."
NetChoice's track record gives the statement some teeth. The group has beaten back what Breitbart described as "identical digital identification laws" in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. Ohio is the first state where NetChoice has lost at the appellate level on this type of statute.
Whether NetChoice seeks en banc review from the full Sixth Circuit or petitions the Supreme Court remains an open question. The group's statement left its next legal move unspecified.
The decision creates a circuit split, or at the very least, a sharp divergence in how federal courts treat state laws regulating minors' access to social media. Other circuits have sided with the tech industry. The Sixth Circuit did not. That kind of disagreement is precisely what draws the Supreme Court's attention.
For conservative lawmakers in statehouses across the country, the ruling offers a template. Ohio's law survived because the court treated parental consent as a modest, targeted requirement, not as censorship. Judge Clay's language about a "marginal burden" gives future defenders of similar statutes a phrase to build on.
The broader context is hard to ignore. Courts have been active battlegrounds for conservative policy priorities, from redistricting fights to ballot access disputes. Thursday's Sixth Circuit ruling fits squarely in a pattern where appellate judges are refusing to let industry pressure override elected legislatures acting on behalf of families.
The case now returns to the lower court that originally blocked the law. That court has been instructed to vacate the injunction, which should clear the path for enforcement. The timeline for that step is unclear. So is the practical question of how quickly Ohio can compel compliance from platforms that operate globally and have resisted similar mandates elsewhere.
Several details remain unresolved. The precise scope of "social media and gaming apps" covered by the law has not been publicly detailed in a way that settles every edge case. And the dissenting judge's reasoning, which could preview arguments NetChoice makes on appeal, has not been reported.
As Newsmax noted, the ruling represents a rare loss for the tech industry's legal arm in a fight it had been winning everywhere else. That alone makes the decision significant. If it holds, Ohio's law becomes the first of its kind to survive federal court review and reach enforcement.
Strip away the legal jargon, and the dispute comes down to a simple question: Who decides whether a 13-year-old can hand over personal data to a social media company, the child, the company, or the parent?
For years, the answer was effectively the child and the company. A minor could tap "I agree," and the platform could start collecting data, serving algorithmic content, and monetizing attention, all without a parent knowing, let alone consenting. Ohio's legislature said that arrangement was unacceptable. NetChoice said the legislature overstepped. Two out of three Sixth Circuit judges said Ohio got it right.
The tech industry spent years telling parents that protecting kids online was the family's job. Now that a state has given families an actual tool to do it, the same industry is in court arguing the tool violates the Constitution. The contradiction speaks for itself.
