1/ What would a day ending in "day" be without a Texas legislator not understanding the First Amendment.
This time it's @JaredLPatterson, with a performative, unconstitutional nonsense bill to ban minors from social media and require platforms to verify all users' identity.
This time it's @JaredLPatterson, with a performative, unconstitutional nonsense bill to ban minors from social media and require platforms to verify all users' identity.
https://twitter.com/dallasnews/status/1601223895620751360
2/ The text of the bill is here: capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/bi…
The bill's brevity belies the magnitude of its stupidity.
The bill's brevity belies the magnitude of its stupidity.
3/ First there's this part, which would mandate that platforms require anyone to have an account to access it, and that such account holders must be 18+.
It's as close to obviously unconstitutional as you can get.
It's as close to obviously unconstitutional as you can get.
4/ "Minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them."
Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 212-13 (1975).
Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 212-13 (1975).
5/ Quite obviously, banning all social media use is neither narrow, nor one of those well-defined circumstances. This bill is as unconstitutional as Patterson is unfit to serve in a legislature.
6/ Even narrower attempts at limiting distribution of protected expression to minors have failed. When CA tried to ban sale of violent video games to minors, the Supreme Court struck it down, citing Erznoznik. casetext.com/case/brown-v-e…
7/ And parental consent requirements of this breadth wouldn't survive constitutional scrutiny either.
8/ Of course, to cut off minors, that means you have to require age-verification. And the bill, in all its magnificent cluelessness, makes that explicit.
9/ Except there's that tiny problem, again, of the First Amendment. When Congress (and several states) passed laws outlawing online transmission of materials "harmful to minors," they argued that websites could invoke an affirmative defense that they age-verified users.
10/ The courts were *not* impressed. Setting aside the impossibility of reliably verifying the actual identity/age of users, government-mandated identity verification violates the First Amendment rights of individuals to access lawful content (and speak) anonymously.
11/ @TechFreedom and more than a dozen scholars just explained why #KOSA posed a threat to the First Amendment for this very same reason. techfreedom.org/wp-content/upl…
12/ But it's not just the users. Imposing age verification requirements also unacceptably burdens the First Amendment rights of website/platform owners.
This is well-established jurisprudence, and it has been affirmed and re-affirmed by countless courts.
This is well-established jurisprudence, and it has been affirmed and re-affirmed by countless courts.
13/ So no, @JaredLPatterson, you can't ban minors from social media, or mandate identity verification.
You probably could have figured that out from an hour on your search engine of choice.
But whether or not your bill is stupid doesn't really matter to you, does it?
You probably could have figured that out from an hour on your search engine of choice.
But whether or not your bill is stupid doesn't really matter to you, does it?
14/ Obvious unconstitutionality aside, nobody should *want* kids banned from social media. Kids, like adults, gain a lot from communicating with diverse people across the world. And we'd be raising digitally illiterate kids completely unprepared to participate in modern life.
15/ Was it something I said?
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