Florida's New Social Media Ban Faces First Amendment Challenge In Courts

The state of Florida has passed a major new law that limits social media use for children, banning popular apps for anyone under the age of 14. But can this law stand up in court? Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The state of Florida has passed a major new law that limits social media use for children banning popular apps for anyone under the age of 14. But can this law stand up in court? Okay. So here's what you hear in response to this. It makes, again, I gotta look at it from a constitutional standpoint. They're saying, oh, this Wasserman, they interviewed some guy named Wasserman about the First Amendment. Yeah. It's a First Amendment issue. But you begin every analysis by saying, is there a standard where the First Amendment issue can be trumped? Where you can say, yeah, First Amendment's important, but health, safety and welfare concerns are more important than that. And so for this, to say that this is simply gonna be analyzed from a First Amendment standpoint is absurd. It's a ridiculous thing for this guy to say. Pick it up from there.

Yeah. So what we've got in the state of Florida, bipartisan legislation, Democrats and Republicans passed this legislation saying, if you're under the age of 14, social media apps are off limits. 14 and 15 years old, you do it with parents' consent, 16 and up, no problem there. So that's the law and it goes into effect January 1st, 2025. And the critics of the law, which in spirit, I like what the law's doing because I think it's necessary. But the critics of it are, like you said, they're saying, no, it's a First Amendment issue. But at least, to the only time I'll probably ever credit the government here in Florida, they're saying, no, listen, we have a duty to protect, like you say, with the police powers.

Health, safety and welfare, police powers. Right.

And we have reports off the charts of children being harmed by these social media apps. You and I have sat here and talked about some of the horrific things happen.

Oh, dozens of stories.

So that's why, listen, I don't think this is a violation of First Amendment rights when you consider the police powers, and I think they may be going after the wrong group. It's not the kids. They really should be going after the social media companies themselves. But if we can't get that at this point, maybe this is the route to go.

Yeah. I thought the reporter did a terrible job on this story. He focused on one professor, Wasserman, and Wasserman tells the New Times, well, this is all a First amendment. Well, it's not. Okay. It's not. Otherwise, how would you even control pornographic material? How would you control voting? How would you control driver's license? How would you control alcohol or cigarettes? There's some things that fall squarely within health, safety and welfare. And they fall under something called strict scrutiny. Okay. First Amendment is what you would regard as, when an appellate court looks at it, they look at it with strict scrutiny. The assumption is that this violates the First Amendment. You start there, but you say, wait, is there something that overpowers that? And of course, we wouldn't have any of these laws. We wouldn't have cigarettes. We wouldn't have voting. We wouldn't have alcohol where we're driven by age. We'd have none of this. If all you said, or driving, you'd have none of it if you just said, okay, well, let's look at the First Amendment aspect of something like pornography, or let's look at the First Amendment of, you can virtually say that anything, you have some First Amendment in your expression, your desire to do something. But it's just a wrong analysis. I don't know. I think that this was defeated in Arkansas, wasn't it?

Yeah. And Utah's got one that's currently going through the courts. But again, they're staying to the strict First Amendment, yes or no questions. They're not trying to make the good argument, which is, we have seen the data.