The law, as applied to the social media titans, is a content-based restriction on speech that violates the First Amendment, according to three separate complaints filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
But the California Attorney General’s Office said that the law “is about protecting speech.” The office added, “Companies have blatantly shown us that they are willing to use addictive design features, including algorithmic feeds and notifications at all hours of the day and night, to target children and teens, solely to increase their profits.”
The state AG’s office pointed to its preliminary win in its defense of the law. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the existing challenge to the “addictive-feed protections is likely to fail,” the office said.
This isn’t the first time that California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act has been challenged. NetChoice LLC—a trade group that represents Meta, Snap Inc., X Corp., and other tech giants— claimed that the law’s content restrictions violated the First Amendment. But the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ultimately held that NetChoice failed to show that algorithmic social media feeds are expressive speech protected by the First Amendment.
NetChoice initiated a litigation campaign with dozens of cases around the country targeting state laws that regulate social media and e-commerce platforms. The group succeeded in blocking a previous California regulation, known as the Age Appropriate Design Code, with the Ninth Circuit last year agreeing that the statute likely violates the First Amendment.
During the oral argument before the Ninth Circuit in NetChoice’s California case, Judge Ryan D. Nelson compared the use of addictive algorithms to tobacco products, saying that the use of the algorithms “might be actually worse than a carcinogen.”
The Ninth Circuit did rule that some of the statute’s provisions, such as its requirement that platforms not show minor users a post’s “like” count, are likely unconstitutional.
TikTok’s complaint also notes that neither the Ninth Circuit nor the district court determined whether the law’s personalized-feed provisions are unconstitutional, as applied to any particular online platform. Meta’s complaint says that it filed this suit to address that issue.
Meta says that subject to its content moderation policies, its services “‘allow[] users to gain access to information and communicate with one another about it on any subject that might come to mind,’” according to its complaint. Meta’s users engage in a wide array of protected First Amendment activity on its platforms, it says.
The law’s personalized feed restrictions unconstitutionally restrict Meta from curating and disseminating to teens aged 13–17 third-party expression—a form of expression that the US Supreme Court recently held, in Moody v. NetChoice LLC, is protected by the First Amendment, Meta says.
Because Meta makes expressive choices determining the content of its feeds, those feeds are also entitled to First Amendment protections, Meta says. But California’s law prohibits Meta from disseminating that information unless it complies with the state’s dictates, it says.
Just as the state can’t dictate how a library orders its books, it also can’t dictate how Meta organizes fully protected user-generated speech, its complaint says.
The restriction also fails strict scrutiny, because they are a content-based and speaker-based restriction on Meta’s protected editorial activity, the company’s complaint says. The restriction doesn’t promote any legitimate government interest, and parents can restrict their children’s access to the information through other means, such as supervision tools on the platforms, it says.
The other plaintiffs make many of the same arguments in their complaints, claiming the parental consent provision imposes unconstitutional burdens on First Amendment-protected activity by the platforms and their users.
YouTube and Google argue in their complaint that the law burdens their protected right to express their view as to the content that will be relevant, valuable, and appropriate for each particular user, and burdens the rights of minors to access speech and discover content without the permission of a parent.
Covington & Burling LLP represents Meta. O’Melveny & Myers LLP represents TikTok. Cooley LLP represents Google and YouTube.
The cases are Meta Platforms Inc. v. Bonta, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-09792, complaint filed 11/13/25; TikTok Inc. v. Bonta, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-09789, complaint filed 11/13/25; NetChoice v. Bonta, N.D. Cal., No. 5:25-cv-09795, complaint filed 11/13/25.
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