CCIA v. Paxton

In September 2024, the state of Texas passed House Bill 18 (“HB18”). The law’s monitoring and filtering provisions obligate social media platforms to restrict minors’ access to purportedly harmful content (defined in such a way that sweeps in large swaths of the internet ) and engage in a complex set of implementation requirements. The bill also requires platforms to verify users’ ages and gives parents and public schools extensive control over the accounts of minors.

In July 2024, NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas challenging HB18 on First Amendment grounds. Judge Robert Pitman issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law’s monitoring and filtering provisions, citing vague terms such as “grooming,” and “harassment,” while allowing other requirements, such as age verification, to remain.

Following an appeal to the Fifth Circuit, the ACLU, ACLU of Texas, Cato Institute, Student Press Law Center, TechFreedom, Wikimedia Foundation, and Woodhull Freedom Foundation filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs-appellees CCIA and NetChoice. Our brief contends that HB18's broad and vague moderation requirements constitute a content-based burden on First Amendment protected speech and are accordingly subject to strict scrutiny. The law’s broad language sweeps in speech that is protected under the Constitution and in some cases inarguably beneficial—such as helpful resources around mental health, which can be essential to many teenagers learning to navigate life’s challenges.

Texas’s effort to conscript private companies into serving as agents of its moral and political agenda is a profound threat to the First Amendment. Just as the government cannot tell a newspaper what stories to run, it cannot force social media platforms to adopt state-approved speech codes or prevent minors from seeing specific stories. HB18 goes even further by demanding that platforms maintain databases of harmful content and keywords for content filtering and make available their algorithms (a term not defined in the statute) for outside researchers to verify, but Texas has made no effort to justify why these requirements are necessary under the exacting test of strict scrutiny. This case is central to the ACLU’s mission to protect freedom of speech as it tests whether the government can weaponize regulatory authority to force digital platforms to enforce ideological preferences under the guise of protecting minors. If upheld, HB18 would create a dangerous precedent for state overreach: enabling officials to not just dictate what speech is disfavored, but fully block certain speech from minors.

The government claims that it’s simply trying to protect children, but the Supreme Court has consistently held that state interests in shielding minors cannot justify sweeping speech restrictions, especially when less restrictive alternatives are available. By overriding private content policies and pushing speech that aligns with state ideology, HB18 violates well-established constitutional principles.

The ACLU’s brief urges the Fifth Circuit to uphold the district court’s injunction and make clear that the government cannot commandeer private speech platforms to impose its preferred ideological views. To allow otherwise would set a dangerous precedent: empowering the state to suppress dissenting voices and control the boundaries of public discourse. The stakes in CCIA v. Paxton are not just about platform regulation; they’re about the future of free expression in the digital age.