ATLANTA, Ga. — Georgia can again try to enforce its social media age rules after a federal appeals panel on Thursday wiped out the injunction that had frozen the statute for more than a year.
Attorney General Chris Carr defended Senate Bill 351 against NetChoice, the trade association for major platforms. An Eleventh Circuit panel vacated the earlier block and sent the fight back to the Atlanta trial court for more work, while removing the statewide pause on enforcement.
The 2024 law tells covered services to take commercially reasonable steps to confirm a user age. If the person is younger than 16, the company must obtain a parent or guardian okay before creating an account. It also tightens how those younger users can be targeted with ads and how much personal data may be gathered about them.
NetChoice filed suit in Atlanta seeking to kill the measure before a planned July 1, 2025 start date. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg sided with the group on June 26, 2025, and held the law. Carr filed his appeal the same day.
In the Oct. 15 opinion, the appeals judges said NetChoice could bring the case for its members yet failed to prove a facial First Amendment claim was likely to succeed across the board. They also rejected district-court findings that pieces of the statute were too vague or wiped out by Section 230.
Carr said the decision protects Georgia families and pushes back against companies that resist basic child-safety rules online. The opinion is not a final word on every constitutional argument; those questions go back to the trial court. For now, the injunction that stopped SB 351 is gone, and the state may move to put the age and consent duties into force while litigation continues.
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