Carding the Internet Still Isn’t Constitutional
After the U.S. Supreme Court decided Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton last year, I wrote that the “broader war over age verification and parental consent online isn’t over.” As we head into 2026, that prediction looks right.
The fight has shifted. Lawmakers have moved their focus from social-media platforms to app stores. But the basic problem hasn’t changed: the First Amendment still stands in the way.
By now, the pattern is clear. Federal courts have repeatedly held that age-verification and parental-consent mandates for social media block minors’ access to lawful speech and fail constitutional scrutiny. These laws don’t use the least-restrictive means. Courts point instead to a wide range of tools that already let parents and teens manage online risks without forcing everyone to prove their age just to speak or read.
Put simply, families can address these harms more directly and at lower cost than the government can by regulating speech.
Nothing in the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition changes this. The Court applied intermediate scrutiny only “[b]ecause speech that is obscene to minors is unprotected.” It stressed that only “where the speech in question is unprotected” may states impose content-based restrictions “without triggering strict scrutiny.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh made the point explicit. Reviewing the Court’s First Amendment cases, including Free Speech Coalition, he noted that “[g]iven those precedents, it is no surprise that the District Court in [NetChoice, LLC v. Fitch] enjoined enforcement of the Mississippi law and that seven other Federal District Courts have likewise enjoined enforcement of similar state laws.”