FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.—Today, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas issued a preliminary injunction in NetChoice’s lawsuit against Arkansas Act 900, a cosmetic attempt by the state to update an online censorship law that has already been deemed unconstitutional by the courts.
“Once again, the District Court hit the nail on the head. Left to its own devices, Arkansas would ‘sentence speech on the internet to death by a thousand cuts.’ Fortunately, the First Amendment prohibits such blatant speech restrictions,” said Paul Taske, Co-Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. “We look forward to seeing the law ultimately struck down.”
Taske continued: “Act 900 is deeply flawed. It burdens speech without providing any upside. Indeed, as the court recognized, there are non-tech, constitutional measures that could be taken to advance Arkansas’s goals. But Arkansas chose to ignore the constitutional options available and opted to impose many vague restrictions on websites instead, interfering with user speech rights and jeopardizing user privacy by forcing websites to track their visitors and collect sensitive data just to comply with the State’s vague standards. We are pleased the court paused these unconstitutional provisions from going into effect as NetChoice’s lawsuit proceeds, ensuring that Arkansas parents and guardians, not the government, remain in the driver’s seat of their children’s online experiences.”
In his decision, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Brooks found that Act 900 likely violates Arkansans’ First Amendment rights, places sweeping surveillance provisions on digital services, and fails to provide clear provisions for online businesses to follow, making it unconstitutionally vague.
Key Quotes From Today’s Ruling in NetChoice v. Griffin (2025):
- “Arkansas cannot sentence speech on the internet to death by a thousand cuts.”
- “Imposing small burdens on vast quantities of speech for no appreciable benefit is not consistent with the First Amendment.”
- “It is well established that, as a general rule, the government ‘may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.’”
- “‘The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury’…NetChoice has shown that it is likely to suffer irreparable injury if Act 900 goes into effect.”
Read today’s ruling here. Learn more about NetChoice v. Griffin (2025) here.
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