Lost in Lualand

Case: Netchoice v Wilson, 3:26-cv-00543, (D.S.C.)

Netchoice's litigation page: Netchoice v Wilson

Netchoice filed the motion for preliminary injunction on March 9. It isn't available on the docket in RECAP yet (and I'm over my threshold for PACER fees that will get refunded for the quarter, or else I'd put it there!) but it is available on Netchoice's litigation page: Motion for Preliminary Injunction. They haven't included the declarations, but here's Dreamwidth's declaration as filed, authored by yours truly. Because of the wild incoherence of so many of the provisions of this law, many of which were new because a lot of states have switched to using different model legislation, I had to write almost all of our declaration for this one from scratch (while recovering from a lumbar puncture, lying flat on my back in bed: never let it be said I am not completely extra about the lengths to which I will go to fight against this bullshit), so much less of it will look familiar than usual, but boy was I mad.

We'll let you know when the judge makes a ruling on the PI! And three cheers as always for the Netchoice team and for the outside litigation counsel team, who is Lehotsky Keller Cohn for this one and who put in massively heroic effort to get this filed as fast as possible thanks to the law taking immediate effect.

People frequently ask us about whether their specific US state is trying to enact a social media age verification law so they can call their state representatives and yell at them about it! I have had "build a system that will let me easily update this without having to do so manually, categorizing these bills by status, what problems they have, and what we'd do about them if they pass" on my want-to-do list for a really long time, but until I can, here's the current list of bills I know about.

This (very long, sigh) list is accurate to the best of my knowledge as of 8 March 2026, but it may not include every bill that's been introduced in every state. (I've used a few different lists plus my own "searching until I got too depressed to continue" to assemble it, excluding laws I think have absolutely no chance of passing but including laws where I think there's still even a slight chance.) If you know of one that isn't on the list, please let me know in the comments!

These are state laws only. I'm concentrating on those because you can find lists of bad federal bills more easily, but all the lists of state bills I know of are industry-gated or limited-distribution. If you don't have a preferred source for finding out about bad federal legislation about the internet, Bad Internet Bills (from Fight for the Future) and the EFF Action Center are a great place to start!

This list is only counting social media bills; I am not including bills that don't apply to us because they're modeled on the app store/OS age signal model legislation or bills that deal with age verification for other services like chatbots or "AI companions", because I'd go completely off the rails and resort to just screaming incoherently when the list passed a hundred items. I will try to update this at least quarterly, or whenever the Magic 8 Ball says there's a rapidly moving bill that you need to yell at people about.


( The Current Hall of Shame )