Civil Rights

Arkansas “Social Media Safety Act” Ruled Unconstitutional

/ Rob Nussbaum

On March 31, 2025, a judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, granted summary judgment for the plaintiff in NetChoice, LLC v. Griffin, a case in which NetChoice, an internet trade association, challenged Arkansas Act 689 – The Social Media Safety Act – (“Act 689”) on the grounds that Act 689 was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and vague. Ruling in favor of NetChoice, the court declared that if Act 689 was implemented, it would not only violate the First Amendment because it was a facially content-based restriction on speech that was not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest, but the statute was also unconstitutionally vague. The court entered an order permanently enjoining the State from enforcing Act 689.

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N.J. App. Div. Permits Teacher’s Defamation Suit Based on Social Media Posts to Proceed

/ Rob Nussbaum

On October 24, 2024, the Appellate Division in New Jersey issued a decision in Herman v. Muhammad affirming a trial court’s denial of a motion to dismiss a defamation and false light invasion of privacy action filed by a teacher against a woman who made Instagram and Facebook posts which were allegedly false and malicious. The social media posts concerned the alleged removal of a seven-year-old student’s hijab in class by the teacher.

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The Second Circuit, The Second Amendment, and Social Media

/ Rob Nussbaum / 1 Comment

On December 8, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided Antonyuk v. Chiumento, a case which challenged many provisions of New York’s law regulating the public carrying of firearms, the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (“CCIA”), based on the Second Amendment.

One challenged provision of the CCIA related to its requirement that an applicant for a concealed-carry license attend an in-person meeting with a licensing officer and disclose, among other things, “a list of all former and current social media accounts from the preceding three years.” Plaintiffs (several individuals, one church, and two advocacy groups each claiming to be adversely affected by the requirements of the CCIA) moved for a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of this provision. The district court granted the preliminary injunction as to this provision, holding that the CCIA violated the Second Amendment by conditioning the issuance of a license on the disclosure of the applicant’s former and current social media accounts for the preceding three years. The district court found this requirement of the law lacked a sufficient basis in the “Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” one of the analytical steps a court must consider as set forth in the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen.

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Wiretap Order, not a Search Warrant, Needed to Obtain Certain Information from Facebook

/ Rob Nussbaum

The April 18, 2022 Trending Law Blog post discussed how, in Facebook, Inc. v. State of New Jersey, the New Jersey Appellate Division held that a communications data warrant, rather than a wiretap order, was required for law enforcement officers to obtain “prospective electronically stored information” from Facebook users as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

In a June 29, 2023 decision, however, the Supreme Court of New Jersey unanimously reversed the determination of the Appellate Division.

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Know Your Rights

/ Rob Nussbaum

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “A growing number of employers and schools are demanding that job applicants and students hand over the passwords to their private social networking accounts.”

SNOPA

Congress unsuccessfully attempted to address those concerns with the Social Networking Online Protection Act (“SNOPA”) in 2013. SNOPA would have prohibited employers and certain institutions of higher education from requesting passwords or social networking access from employees, applicants for employment, students or potential students, or from taking adverse actions against employees, students or potential students who declined to provide their passwords or access to their social media accounts. Unfortunately SNOPA was never enacted, despite being introduced three times by New York Congressman Eliot Engel.

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