A Federal judge in Georgia has temporarily blocked key provisions of the state’s new age verification law, ruling that it likely violates constitutional protections around free speech.

Senior U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg granted a preliminary injunction in favor of NetChoice, a trade group representing major technology firms including Meta, Google, Amazon, and Reddit. The group challenged Georgia Senate Bill 351, the Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act of 2024, which mandates age verification for both adult websites and mainstream social media platforms, regardless of whether explicit content is present.

“The Act curbs the speech rights of Georgia’s youth while imposing an immense, potentially intrusive burden on all Georgians who wish to engage in the most central computerized public fora of the twenty-first century,” Totenberg wrote in her 50-page ruling.

The court sided with NetChoice’s argument that SB 351 would require users to surrender sensitive personal data to access constitutionally protected digital spaces. The law, had it gone into effect, would have also barred minors from joining social media unless their parents submitted significant personal information, and would have imposed inconsistent exemptions across different platforms.

NetChoice’s director of litigation, Chris Marchese, hailed the decision as “a major victory for free speech, constitutional clarity and the rights of all Georgians.” He added, “Free expression doesn’t end where government anxiety begins. Parents—not politicians—should guide their children’s lives online and offline—and no one should have to hand over a government ID to speak in digital spaces.”

Despite the ruling, the law’s backers remain optimistic. Republican state Sen. Jason Anavitarte, the bill’s lead sponsor, expressed confidence that Georgia’s legislation would eventually be upheld, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found similar age verification requirements for pornography websites to be constitutional under intermediate scrutiny.

“Requiring proof of age is an ordinary and appropriate means of enforcing an age-based limit on obscenity to minors,” Anavitarte said in comments to the Georgia Recorder, referencing the Court’s 6-3 ruling in favor of a Texas statute regulating online porn access.

That Supreme Court decision, however, focused specifically on adult content and did not address broader applications to mainstream social media or general online speech, which remains at the heart of the Georgia case. Notably, NetChoice’s legal challenge focused solely on the social media portion of the bill, leaving age verification requirements for adult websites unchallenged and potentially still enforceable.

The ruling adds Georgia to a growing list of states where similar laws have faced legal setbacks, including California, Ohio, Mississippi, Florida, Utah, Arkansas, and Texas. As legal battles continue across the country, the debate over how to protect children online without infringing on constitutional rights remains unresolved.

A final decision on the constitutionality of Georgia’s full SB 351 is still pending, with future hearings expected as legal and political pressure continues to mount on both sides.