Permanent injunction entered March 31, 2025. Arkansas appealed; the Eighth Circuit appeal is pending. A permanent injunction is not the same as an appeal-proof final outcome.
Arkansas Social Media Safety Act (SB 396)
Stoppedno longer moving
Bad for your rightsDefeated
Permanently enjoined March 2025; state appeal pending
Arkansas's social media age-verification law, struck down in full as unconstitutional. The state came back with a rewrite.
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Read the full billOfficial bill recordKey facts
- Where
- Arkansas, United States
- Bill number
- Arkansas SB 396 (Act 689)
- Status
- Defeated
- Introduced
- April 11, 2023
- Threat
- High
- Last update
- March 31, 2025
Topics
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What it does
The Social Media Safety Act made social media companies verify the age of every user and get parental consent for minors. A federal court held it violated the First Amendment in every application and permanently blocked it.
What’s at stake
This is the clearest court win against age verification so far: struck down for all users, not just narrowed. It shows these laws can be beaten in court, and other challenges cite it.
Our take
A rare clean loss for the age-checking crowd. A federal judge threw the law out entirely on free-speech grounds. Arkansas did not give up, though, and passed a rewritten version now facing the same fight, so this moved to round two.
The record
Votes
- House: Final passage (82 to 10), April 5, 2023
- Senate: Final passage (21 to 3), April 6, 2023
Legal challenges
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