The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a Georgia law that requires age verification before minors can access social media sites, reversing the path set by an earlier injunction and sending the fight back to district court.
The decision landed Thursday. Judges indicated it is unlikely that NetChoice’s lawsuit will succeed. The Center Square reported that Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office provided the ruling and framed it as a win for families trying to keep children safer online.
Senate Bill 351 was signed in 2024 by Gov. Brian Kemp. It targets platforms used by minors and backs the rule with real penalties. Companies that fail to fix violations face fines of up to $2,500 per violation if the problem is not remedied within 90 days.
That is the kind of concrete enforcement parents have asked lawmakers to deliver for years. Big platforms built products that pull kids in deep. States then had to decide whether to wait for voluntary reform or write rules that match the risk.
In June 2025, Judge Amy Totenberg called the law “constitutionally infirm” and granted a preliminary injunction. That order kept SB 351 from taking effect while NetChoice pressed its case.
NetChoice is a trade organization that represents apps such as Facebook and Instagram. It sued to stop the Georgia statute and has challenged similar measures in other states with mixed results.
The 11th Circuit’s Thursday action changes the momentum. The case returns to district court with the appeals panel signaling weak odds for the challenge. That sequence matters for any state trying to set age gates without waiting on Silicon Valley’s preferred timeline, much as other recent federal fights over contested state laws have turned on how broadly judges read speech and regulation claims.
Carr did not say much about the stakes.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said:
“This is 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,”
He continued:
“We have said before, it shouldn’t take lawsuits, investigations or legislation to do the right thing. This is about keeping our children safe from online predators and mental health harms. Nothing is more important.”
Those lines put the burden where many Georgia parents already place it. Online predators and documented mental-health harms are not abstract. Age verification is one tool states can use when platforms will not police access on their own.
NetChoice is evaluating its next legal steps. Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, stressed that the appeals court did not declare the statute constitutional on the merits.
Taske said in a statement:
“While we are disappointed in the 11th Circuit’s ruling, the court notably did not hold that SB351 is constitutional,”
He added:
“We remain committed to fighting for Georgians’ right to free expression online and ensuring parents, not the government, stay in charge of decisions for their families.”
In earlier comments, Taske warned that mandated age and identity checks could create a storehouse of sensitive data. He called that collection a “treasure trove” or “honeypot” of information about ages, identities, and parent relationships.
He has also argued that law enforcement, not broad platform mandates, should lead against online criminals, and that classrooms and parent education deserve more public funding. Those alternatives are real debates. They do not erase the core problem the Georgia statute targets: minors reaching social media without a reliable age gate.
Parents can set rules at home. They cannot rewrite the product design of every app their children see. When industry groups insist government must stay out while children remain one click from adult content and predatory contact, voters notice the gap. High-stakes courtroom clashes over speech, access, and state power have become familiar terrain, including fights such as the press-access lawsuit filed by major outlets against the Trump administration.
Georgia is not alone. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a July decision, allowed Ohio’s social media verification law to move forward.
In a related Tennessee matter, the same 6th Circuit vacated a district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction aimed at that state’s age-verification law. That order was not a full ruling on the constitutional merits. It directed the lower court to weigh NetChoice’s chances of success on those claims.
Taken together, the Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee tracks show statehouses testing the same idea: require age checks before minors get full social media access, then defend the rule in federal court. Industry challenges keep coming. Appellate panels are no longer treating every injunction as automatic.
Federal courts also continue to sort other contested enforcement tools that states want to use, including the recent move in which the Supreme Court restored a Trump-era SAVE tool for state voter citizenship checks. The subject matter differs. The pattern is familiar, states assert authority, opponents sue, and higher courts decide whether the policy can proceed.
The statute’s mechanism is straightforward. Social media companies must verify age before minors can access their sites. If a company falls short and does not cure the violation within 90 days, it can face fines reaching $2,500 for each violation.
That structure pairs a duty with a deadline and a penalty. It does not ban social media. It conditions minor access on age verification. Supporters cast it as basic child protection. Opponents cast it as a speech burden and a privacy risk.
Judge Totenberg’s June 2025 description of the law as “constitutionally infirm” gave NetChoice an early win and froze enforcement. The 11th Circuit’s Thursday ruling undercuts that freeze by finding the challenge unlikely to succeed and returning the case for further proceedings in district court.
Exact docket language, the full statutory text, and the next hearing dates were not laid out in the initial report. What is clear is the direction of travel: the preliminary block no longer defines the case, and Georgia’s elected officials intend to keep pressing the child-safety rationale.
State-level political contests keep running on parallel tracks while these lawsuits unfold. Readers following Southern GOP primaries and federal-state power fights have watched figures such as Ken Paxton consolidate Texas congressional endorsements in his Senate bid, another reminder that court outcomes and ballot-box fights often move in the same news cycle.
Carr’s office ties the law to two harms that are hard to dismiss: online predators and mental-health damage tied to heavy youth use of social platforms. Taske answers that parents should stay in charge and that government-mandated data collection creates new risks.
Both sides claim to speak for families. Only one side wrote and signed a statute that forces platforms to verify age before minors get in. Kemp signed SB 351 in 2024. Carr is defending it. NetChoice is still fighting it.
Free expression online is a serious interest. So is the reality that children are not adults, and platforms designed for engagement do not automatically install adult judgment. Age verification is a limited, familiar tool in other parts of commercial life. Applying it to social media is the contested step, not the idea that age can matter.
NetChoice’s “honeypot” warning deserves scrutiny of how any verification system stores data. It does not, by itself, prove that the only lawful option is to leave access wide open until a parent notices trouble. Lawmakers can demand strong data safeguards while still requiring age checks. Courts can demand precision without treating every child-protection rule as a speech ban.
The 11th Circuit did not end the litigation. It did change who holds the momentum. Georgia’s law is no longer sidelined by the preliminary injunction that followed Totenberg’s “constitutionally infirm” finding. District court comes next. NetChoice will keep arguing. Carr will keep calling the statute common sense.
For families living with phones in every backpack, the policy question is not theoretical. It is whether elected officials may set a minimum gate before minors scroll into spaces built to hold their attention for hours. Thursday’s ruling says that effort is not the long shot NetChoice hoped it would be.
When platforms profit from youth attention and then sue to block age gates, states that put children first are doing the job voters hired them to do.
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