ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Today, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted NetChoice’s request for a preliminary injunction, halting the enforcement of SB 854.This ruling prevents the state of Virginia from imposing unconstitutional restrictions on how its citizens access lawful speech online while NetChoice v. Miyares moves through the legal system.
“The First Amendment is alive and well in Virginia. This ruling reaffirms that the government cannot ration access to lawful speech—even if it has noble intentions. Fundamentally, parents must stay in the driver’s seat when it comes to decisions about their families,” said Paul Taske, Co-Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center.
“Today’s decision underscores a core truth: unconstitutional laws do not help anyone. Moreover, laws requiring age-verification and other privacy-invasive measures actually make everyone less safe and more prone to data breaches. We are seeing this in real time as countries around the world have started mandating similar privacy-destroying age-verification regimes.”
The Court’s ruling validates NetChoice’s core arguments against SB 854:
- Virginians’ Free Speech Rights: The government cannot dictate how long citizens engage with protected speech, whether it is reading a book, watching a documentary or using social media.
- Parental Rights: Parents, not the state, are the proper authority to decide what is appropriate for their families and how they spend their time online.
- The Right to Privacy & Security: By halting the law’s age-verification mandates, the ruling protects Virginians from being forced to hand over sensitive ID information, which would create a honeypot for cybercriminals and predators.
Virginia sought to ban minors from accessing social media for more than one hour per day without parental consent and required widespread age verification on lawful speech. Such restrictions are no different than the government limiting the time a person can spend reading a newspaper or having a conversation.
NetChoice is confident that SB 854 will be struck down permanently as the case moves forward. We stand firm in protecting digital spaces for all Virginians and ensuring the internet remains free from government overreach.
You can read the court’s order granting the preliminary injunction here.
Find full case resources for NetChoice v. Miyares here.
Please contact press@netchoice.org with inquiries.