FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: PRESS@NETCHOICE.ORG
JACKSON, Miss.—Today, NetChoice sued Mississippi in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi to keep online communications and speech safe and free, as well as to ensure parents—not big government—are in the driver’s seat of their families.
Lawmakers in Mississippi have unfortunately followed the path of states like California, Arkansas, Ohio and Utah in violating their citizens’ constitutionally protected rights, endangering their online privacy and security, and thwarting their rights to make decisions for their family as they deem appropriate.
“NetChoice is suing Mississippi to keep online communication safe and free and to ensure parents—not politicians—are in the driver’s seat for making decisions about what’s best for their family,” said Chris Marchese, Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. “HB 1126 conditions Mississippians’ access to protected speech on handing over their sensitive, personal data. While violating the First Amendment, this also jeopardizes the security of all Mississippians, especially minors, by requiring them to surrender sensitive, personal information and creates a new target for hackers and other criminals to exploit.”
While well-intentioned, HB 1126 is an unconstitutional overreach into citizens’ rights that courts will likely block. As NetChoice has seen in other states, mandating age verification and parental consent for digital services violates privacy and stifles the free exchange of ideas. Mississippi requires websites to block broad protected speech categories, forcing online businesses to censor speech broadly with vague, unclear compliance standards.
Further, by forcing all websites to identify users, every digital service in Mississippi will need to collect more data and information on their users, including children. This comes at a time when the federal government and state governments have already suffered multiple, massive data breaches by malicious actors this year alone. The government requiring companies to host sensitive data will make them a prime target for hacks from cybercriminals and predators, making the internet less safe for all Mississippians, especially young people.
This law also contains a unique provision with broad content moderation parameters that may result in the censorship of vast amounts of speech online. If the law goes into effect, some examples could include: The U.S. Declaration of Independence, Sherlock Holmes, The Goonies, the National Treasure movie series featuring Nicholas Cage, Taylor Swift’s new album and much more.
Crucially, parents and guardians—not the government—are most appropriately positioned to parent their children. If HB 1126 goes into effect, Mississippi parents will be removed as decision-makers for their children online and replaced by the government.
Parents and guardians, not politicians, should be in charge of their children’s online experience.
The top takeaways of NetChoice v. Fitch:
- HB 1126 violates the First Amendment because it conditions Mississippians’ access to vast amounts of protected speech on handing over their sensitive, personal data.
- It jeopardizes the security of all users, especially minors, by requiring them to surrender sensitive, personal information and creates a new target for hackers and predators to exploit.
- Parents and guardians are best situated to control their family’s online presence. HB 1126 usurps the parental role and seizes it for the State.
- A vast amount of speech could be unintentionally censored online under the vague requirements of the government under the law, including: The U.S. Declaration of Independence, Sherlock Holmes, The Goonies, the National Treasure movie series featuring Nicholas Cage, Taylor Swift’s new album, and much more.
Read Tonya Riley of Bloomberg Law‘s exclusive story on NetChoice v. Fitch here.
You can find our official complaint here and a web page detailing our resources for NetChoice v. Fitch here.
For inquiries, please contact Krista Chavez at press@netchoice.org.