Federal Court Enjoins Colo. Social Media Warning Labels Law
Despite having a “laudable goal,” Colorado may not enforce a law requiring mental health warning labels on social media, the U.S. District Court for Colorado ruled in case 25-cv-2538-WJM-KAS as it granted tech industry association NetChoice’s motion for preliminary injunction on Thursday.
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“The Court fully appreciates Colorado’s legitimate effort to protect the children and adolescents of our state from the impacts of social media use on their health and wellbeing,” wrote Judge William Martinez. However, “It is substantially likely NetChoice will succeed on the merits of its claims that Colorado may not pursue this laudable goal by compelling social media companies to speak its expressive messages.”
More specifically, said Martinez, NetChoice “is likely to show that Section 4 of the [Colorado law] fails to satisfy the demanding strict scrutiny standard prescribed by the First Amendment.” The association will likely show that the section isn’t “the least restrictive means of addressing Colorado’s compelling interest in protecting the health and well-being of its children and adolescents.”
The state requirement’s “compelled disclosures do not constitute commercial speech because they do far more than merely propose a commercial transaction,” the judge added. “Indeed, the disclosures compelled by the Act require social media companies to opine on the impacts of social media use on minors’ mental and physical health … The Court is hard-pressed to conclude that such opinions do not pertain to expressive issues of significant social, political, and scientific concern -- and not matters of a commercial character.”
NetChoice sees the decision as “a victory for free speech,” said Paul Taske, NetChoice Litigation Center co-director. “Colorado is free to shout its own views from the rooftops, and it can even post its view on social media through Colorado’s accounts. But forcing websites to adopt Colorado’s view is blatantly unconstitutional.”
The Colorado attorney general’s office declined to comment.
California recently signed a similar bill into law (see 2510140010). Minnesota signed the first such requirement into law earlier this year (see 2506180004). NetChoice hasn't yet challenged either of those laws. The state laws stem from a recommendation that previous U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy made about warning labels.