NetChoice back in appeals court over injunction on Mississippi age assurance law

Mississippi is currently home to one of the nation’s most contentious legal battles over age assurance legislation, and it shows no sign of slowing. Arguments continue over House Bill 1126 (HB 1126), which imposes age verification requirements on social media platforms.

The Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act passed in April of 2024 and was set to take effect in July of that year. However, NetChoice, the trade organization that litigates online safety laws on behalf of Big Tech, filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Lynn Fitch to The Southern District Court of Mississippi. In July 2024, the law was enjoined. That decision was subsequently appealed to The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which allowed the law to go into effect by vacating the injunction.

In July 2025, Netchoice filed an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a lower court decision affirming HB 1126. The court refused, ruling that the law could stand while NetChoice pursued legal action against the legislation.

However, the decision was not without a caveat from justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote that

“NetChoice has, in my view, demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on the merits – namely, that enforcement of the Mississippi law would likely violate its members’ First Amendment rights under this Court’s precedents.”

Now, NetChoice is back in court. A release from the group says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will once again hear Mississippi’s appeal of NetChoice’s preliminary injunction against HB 1126.

Netchoice asserts that Mississippi’s law is “a content‑based speech restriction and an overbroad regime of age‑verification and parental consent that violates the First Amendment rights of both platforms and users,” per a quote from its attorney, Scott Keller. It believes that, because it requires adult users to perform age assurance using biometrics or other means, it goes beyond what the Constitution allows.

“Right now, as a direct result of Mississippi’s law, Mississippians are being deprived of their right to access constitutionally protected speech,” says Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. “As the Supreme Court has consistently reaffirmed, Americans, including minors, have a right to access lawful speech without government interference. Like many censorship efforts before it, as Justice Kavanaugh recognized, Mississippi’s HB 1126 is likely unconstitutional.”

“We are confident the Fifth Circuit will agree, and we look forward to restoring access to lawful online speech in Mississippi.”

Mississippi to judges: haven’t we been through this before?

A report from Courthouse News Service says that during oral arguments, the three-judge panel pressed the state on “whether the lower court overstepped its bounds and whether the Constitution allows states to mandate age verification and parental consent for online speech.”

Mississippi Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart suggested the Fifth Circuit had “previously instructed NetChoice to perform an assessment of how the law operates across all covered platforms before seeking an injunction.” In other words, don’t come back until you have more evidence.

But the panel wasn’t convinced, and expressed scepticism that the lower court had “truly defied the Fifth Circuit’s prior mandate” with its preliminary injunction blocking HB 1126. According to U.S. Circuit Judge Cory T. Wilson, “our mandate in the prior case did not direct the district court not to entertain an amended complaint or as applied claims, that’s what NetChoice did. They amended their complaint, they asserted new claims, the district court treated those claims.”

No timeline for latest decision

Whether or not the law is constitutional remains up in the air; the panel has not indicated when to expect a ruling. But NetChoice has not been alone in objecting to Mississippi’s law. Social platform Bluesky, which functions like X but without the AI-generated child sexual abuse material and mass biometric privacy violations, has said the law “requires us to restrict access to the site for every unverified user” – a change that would require investing substantial resources in “a solution that we believe limits free speech and disproportionately harms smaller platforms.” The platform blocked access in Mississippi for a time, but lifted the blackout for users 18 years of age and older in December 2025, telling the Mississippi Free Press “we have the technical means to offer a choice for older users” in terms of age verification methods.

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  legislation  |  Mississippi  |  Netchoice  |  social media