Tech industry group sues Arkansas over new social media laws
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A tech industry trade group sued Arkansas Friday over two new laws that would place limits on content on social media platforms and would allow parents of children who killed themselves to sue over content on the platforms.
The lawsuit by NetChoice filed in federal court in Fayetteville, Arkansas, comes months after a federal judge struck down a state law requiring parental consent before minors can create new social media accounts. The new laws were signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year.
'Despite the overwhelming consensus that laws like the Social Media Safety Act are unconstitutional, Arkansas elected to respond to this Court's decision not by repealing the provisions that it held unconstitutional but by instead doubling down on its overreach,' NetChoice said in its lawsuit.
Arkansas is among several states that have been enacting restrictions on social media, prompted by concerns about the impact on children's mental health. NetChoice — whose members include TikTok, Facebook parent Meta, and the social platform X — challenged Arkansas' 2023 age-verification law for social media. A federal judge who initially blocked the law struck it down in March.
Similar laws have been blocked by judges in Florida and Georgia.
A spokesperson for Attorney General Tim Griffin said his office was reviewing the latest complaint and looked forward to defending the law.
One of the new laws being challenged prohibits social media platforms from using a design, algorithm or feature it 'knows or should have known through the exercise of reasonable care' would cause a user to kill themself, purchase a controlled substance, develop an eating disorder, develop an addiction to the platform.
The lawsuit said that provision is unconstitutionally vague and doesn't offer guidance on how to determine which content would violate those restrictions, and the suit notes it would restrict content for both adults and minors. The suit questions whether songs that mention drugs, such as Afroman's 'Because I Got High,' would be prohibited under the new law.
The law being challenged also would allow parents whose children have died by suicide or attempted to take their lives to sue social media companies if they were exposed to content promoting or advancing self-harm and suicide. The companies could face civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.
NetChoice is also challenging another law that attempts to expand Arkansas' blocked restrictions on social media companies. That measure would require social media platforms to ensure minors don't receive notifications between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The measure also would require social media companies to ensure their platform 'does not engage in practices to evoke any addiction or compulsive behavior.' The suit argues that the law doesn't explain how to comply with that restriction and is so broadly written that it's unclear what kind of posts or material would violate it.
'What is 'addictive' to some minors may not be addictive to others. Does allowing teens to share photos with each other evoke addiction?' the lawsuit said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
23 minutes ago
- CNBC
GOP Rep. Don Bacon to retire, Omaha swing district now a top target for Dems
Rep. Don Bacon, a centrist Republican in Nebraska, is preparing to announce his retirement from Congress. The departure could be a chance for Democrats to win a seat in the lower chamber of the House, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority. The formal announcement could come as early as next week, NBC reported on Friday night. NOTUS and Punchbowl News first reported Bacon's plans, which are not unexpected. A spokesperson for Bacon did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment Saturday morning. Bacon represents a key battleground district for Nebraska, which includes most of Omaha. Former Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris won Bacon's district by nearly 5 percentage points in 2024, and former President Joe Biden carried Bacon's district by a larger margin in 2020. Bacon is one of the few congressional Republicans who have been openly critical of President Donald Trump.
Politico
36 minutes ago
- Politico
Alaskan whaling captains score special tax cut in GOP megabill
Senate Republicans have included compromises on key Medicaid and tax issues in updated text for their sweeping domestic policy bill. In an effort to placate GOP moderates on the fence on the legislation, Senate Republicans are planning to provide a $25 billion stabilization fund for rural hospitals over five years. It's a significant bump up from the $15 billion offer Senate Republican leadership had made to a group of Medicaid moderates, who have balked at the steep cuts to the health program contained in the marque legislation. Senate Republicans would also delay planned cuts to provider taxes that fund state obligations to Medicaid. The changes would still incrementally lower the allowable provider tax in Medicaid expansion states from 6 percent down to 3.5 percent. But the drawdown would begin in 2028, one year later than planned — in a nod to concerns from senators like Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who warned this week that resulting cuts to Medicaid could have disastrous electoral consequences in the midterms. The changes come as Senate Republicans are racing ahead with plans to hold a vote on their legislation Saturday. President Donald Trump still wants the bill on his desk by July 4, though Republicans, as of Friday evening, did not have the votes to start debate . The language also reflects changes to the state and local tax deduction sought by blue state House Republicans. The New York, New Jersey and California Republicans have been in prolonged negotiations with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over a boost to the deduction, which Senate Republicans universally want lowered. The new Senate text keeps House Republicans' plan to increase the deduction from $10,000 to $40,000, but it would snap back to current levels after 2029. The new language likely shaves off at least $100 billion from the approximately $350 billion price tag of the House plan. It's still unclear, though, if the compromise would get all of the hardcore SALT Republicans to 'yes.' In a Friday lunch with Senate Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he still had one holdout on the SALT deal -— a likely reference to Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who indicated on Friday that, if there had been a deal, he was not part of it. The text for the Finance committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy and Medicaid, could still see major changes. That's because the language still hasn't been fully updated to reflect rulings from the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, on whether the contained provisions comply with strict budget rules. The tax panel had their final meetings with MacDonough Friday night, but it's unclear how she would weigh in, if at all, on tax provisions enacted under a novel accounting tactic called 'current policy baseline. That tactic takes the unprecedented step of zeroing out trillions of tax cut extensions. Senate Republicans are relying on it to make a slew of provisions, from individual to business tax cuts, permanent. David Lim contributed to this report.
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump news at a glance: No mention of ‘big beautiful bill' July 4 deadline in president's final pitch
Just two days ago, Donald Trump told Republican members of Congress to cancel their vacation plans until his 'big beautiful bill' is sewn up and ready for his signature on 4 July. But in his final pitch to congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday, he made no mention of deadlines, as his marquee tax-and-spending bill develops a logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate. Trump stood before an assembly composed of police and fire officers, working parents and the mother and father of a woman he said died at the hands of an undocumented immigrant to argue that Americans like them would benefit from the bill, which includes new tax cuts and the extension of lower rates enacted during his first term, as well as an infusion of funds for immigration enforcement. 'There are hundreds of things here. It's so good,' he said. The bill is highly divisive and deeply unpopular with segments of the country. Democrats have dubbed the bill the 'big, ugly betrayal', and railed against what would be the biggest funding cut to Medicaid since it was created in 1965, and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance. It would also slash funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps Americans afford food. Republicans intended to circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by using the budget reconciliation procedure, under which they can pass legislation with just a majority vote, provided it only affects spending, revenue and the debt limit. But on Thursday, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled that a change to taxes that states use to pay for Medicaid was not allowed under the rules. Democrats took credit for MacDonough's ruling, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying the party 'successfully fought a noxious provision that would've decimated America's healthcare system and hurt millions of Americans. This win saves hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans to get healthcare, rather than funding tax cuts to billionaires.' Read the full story The US supreme court has paved the way for South Carolina to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program over its status as an abortion provider, a decision that could embolden red states across the country to effectively 'defund' the reproductive healthcare organization. Read the full story The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, defended the US strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities and said that Trump had 'decimated … obliterated' the country's nuclear program despite initial intelligence assessments that last week's strikes had failed to destroy key enrichment facilities and they could resume operations within just months. But he and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, largely based that assessment on AI modeling, showing test videos of the bunker buster bombs used in the strikes and referred questions on a battle damage assessment of Fordow to the intelligence community. Read the full story The US state department has been advised to terminate grants to nearly all remaining programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which would effectively end the department's role in funding pro-democracy programming in some of the world's most hostile totalitarian nations. Read the full story A critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability. Read the full story Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's reconstituted vaccine advisory panel recommended a new treatment to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants. The treatment, a new monoclonal antibody called clesrovimab, was recommended by the powerful committee after being approved by the Food and Drug Administration roughly two weeks ago. The tortured vote took place a day late and after rounds of questions from the panel's seven new members – all ideological allies of Kennedy, who views 'overmedicalization' as one of the greatest threats to American children. Read the full story A US army veteran who lived in the country for nearly 50 years – and earned a prestigious military citation for being wounded in combat – has left for South Korea after he says past struggles with drug addiction left him targeted by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. 'I can't believe this is happening in America,' Sae Joon Park, who held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio in an interview before his departure Monday from Hawaii. 'That blows me away – like [it is] a country that I fought for.' Read the full story The dollar has fallen to a three-year low following a report that Trump is considering soon announcing his choice to succeed the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell. The US justice department sued the Maryland federal judiciary over an order that bars deporting undocumented immigrants for at least one day after filing a challenge. Clothing prices are starting to rise in the US as Trump's tariffs on imported goods start to have an effect, according to the CEO of H&M. Catching up? Here's what happened on .
