On March 13, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of technology trade group NetChoice, LLC, granting its second motion for preliminary injunction, enjoining California Attorney General Rob Bonta from enforcing the California Age Appropriate Design Code Act (the “CAADCA” or “Act”). The Act, which was intended to take effect on July 1, 2024, was enacted to protect the “privacy, safety, and well-being” of children who visit online platforms and to limit how these platforms use and collect their data.
According to the Order, the motion was granted after the court found that NetChoice was likely to succeed in its First Amendment challenge to the Act. Specifically, the court took issue with the CAADCA’s requirement for online businesses to create Data Protection Impact Assessment (“DPIA”) reports, finding that it violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. Under the Act, online business would be forced to provide DPIA reports to the California Attorney General upon request or risk the assessment of civil penalty. To create a report, online businesses would be required to identify how their internet platforms could harm child users and then develop a plan to mitigate or eliminate the identified harms. The court found, among other things, that the CAADCA was unconstitutionally vague in that it requires covered businesses to determine if their platforms contain information that is “materially detrimental” to the “physical health, mental health, or well-being” of a child – terms that, according to the court, “have no established meaning and the CAADCA provides no guidance.”
In addition, after finding that the CAADCA is a content-based regulation, the court concluded that the Act was subject to strict scrutiny, which required the State to prove that the Act’s provisions were narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. While the court acknowledged that protecting the privacy and well-being of children was a compelling interest, the court ultimately determined that the State failed to prove that the Act would actually protect children from online harms. The court also found that the Act’s provisions were not narrowly tailored to serve this compelling state interest.
Order Granting Plaintiff’s Second Motion for Preliminary Injunction