Arkansas Social Media Safety Act (SB 396)
Bad
Struck down as unconstitutional (March 2025)●●● High threatUpdated March 31, 2025
Arkansas's social media age-verification law, struck down in full as unconstitutional. The state came back with a rewrite.
IntroducedApril 11, 2023
Latest actionStruck down as unconstitutional (March 2025) (March 31, 2025)
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.
Why it matters
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.
Votes
- House — Final passage (82 to 10) · April 5, 2023
- Senate — Final passage (21 to 3) · April 6, 2023
Legal challenges
NetChoice v. Griffin
Permanently struck down as unconstitutional, March 2025
Permanently struck down as unconstitutional, March 2025
Related bills
Our coverage: all age-verification stories