Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 9, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an interlocutory ruling, upheld key provisions of California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act (SB 976) (the “Act”), allowing enforcement of the Act’s “addictive” social media feed provisions to proceed.

The Act

The Act was passed in 2024 and was set to take effect on January 1, 2025 (which was extended by district court order to February 1, 2025). In relevant part, the Act prohibits social media platform operators from providing “addictive feeds” to minors (under 18 years of age) unless (1) the operator does not have actual knowledge that the user is a minor or (2) the operator has obtained verifiable parental consent (in compliance with the Act’s requirements) to provide addictive feeds to the minor.

The Act defines “addictive feed” to mean any part of an online service or mobile app in which media “generated or shared by users are, either concurrently or sequentially, recommended, selected, or prioritized for display” based “on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device.” The Act also requires social media operators to implement default privacy-protective settings on minors’ social media accounts. Additionally, the Act requires social media platform operators to enable by default a setting that restricts minor users from seeing the number of “likes,” shares or other feedback that a minor’s social media post has garnered.

The Constitutional Challenge

NetChoice, a trade association representing major technology and e-commerce companies, including social media platforms, sued California to block the Act before it took effect. NetChoice argued that the Act violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections by limiting how social media platforms present content and communicate with users.

The district court granted in part and denied in part NetChoice's motion for a preliminary injunction. See NetChoice v. Bonta, 761 F.Supp.3d 1202, 1232 (N.D. Cal. 2024). NetChoice appealed. 

The Ninth Circuit’s Ruling

In the Ninth Circuit’s September 9, 2025 ruling, the Court sided with NetChoice on certain issues and decided against it on others. The Court ruled on the following key provisions of the Act:

• Upheld “addictive feed” restrictions. The Court upheld the provisions of the Act that require parental consent before minors can receive “addictive feeds.” The Court rejected NetChoice's arguments that the statutory term “addictive feed” is pejorative and vague. The Court agreed with the district court that NetChoice lacked standing to challenge these provisions, noting that the analysis of algorithmic curation is fact-intensive and varies by platform. Therefore, NetChoice did not have standing to litigate the issue on behalf of its members without more specific evidence.     

• Upheld “private mode” default settings. The Court agreed with the district court that requiring minors’ accounts to default to private mode, so that only users connected to the minors’ accounts can view or interact with their posts, is a permissible content-neutral safety measure. Applying intermediate scrutiny under the First Amendment, the panel found this restriction substantially related to California’s interest in protecting children online and upheld this provision in the Act.  
• Declined to uphold engagement metrics restrictions. The Court determined that banning the display of “like” counts and similar engagement metrics to minors was an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech. Applying strict scrutiny under the First Amendment, it concluded that California did not prove this was the least restrictive way to address mental health issues, considering the availability of other options like voluntary filters.

The case now returns to the district court for a trial on the merits, with some of the most significant provisions of the Act—namely, the addictive feed and default privacy setting provisions—remaining in effect, at least until a final decision is reached.

The interlocutory rulings indicate that state laws restricting personalized social media feeds for minors and similar protective measures may withstand First Amendment challenges. The Ninth Circuit noted the district court’s conclusion that “addictive feeds” are not necessarily a form of social media platforms’ speech, meaning that restricting “addictive feeds” does not restrict access to the platforms' speech. The Court, however, declined to address that issue, describing it as a novel question that could not be decided in an interlocutory proceeding with a thin record.