FSC Survives Motion to Dismiss in Tennessee AV Challenge

Last week, a district court judge in Tennessee ruled Free Speech Coalition’s legal challenge to a Tennessee age-verification law can proceed, denying the Attorney General’s motion to dismiss the case. The ruling is an important victory in the ongoing suit against Tennessee, which sought to have the suit dismissed following the Supreme Court ruling in Free Speech Coalition v Paxton. 

Free Speech Coalition and its co-plaintiffs argued that the Tennessee law was poorly tailored to its purpose and unduly vague in its application, citing requirements that platforms reverify visitors every sixty minutes as well as hold verification data for seven years. The ruling signals that while the Supreme Court may have established the constitutionality of age verification more generally, states still face meaningful limits in the design and enforcement of such laws.

Jeff Sandman, attorney for the plaintiffs, was thrilled with the ruling and is eager to proceed with the underlying case:

“Chief Judge Lipman denied the Tennessee Attorney General's motion to dismiss in every respect, allowing the Free Speech Coalition and co-plaintiffs to proceed to discovery on claims brought under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. It is the thorough, thoughtful, and reasoned decision we have come to expect from Judge Lipman, and we are excited to vigorously pursue our claims as the case enters its next phase.”

Jeffrey Douglas, Board Chair of Free Speech Coalition called the decision “an important winning step in these early stages of litigation.”

“None of our claims were dismissed by the Court!” said Douglas. “Most importantly, the Court ruled that we have ‘standing’ to bring the suit, an increasingly difficult hurdle to overcome in recent years. The Attorney General lost on a number of other important issues as well, allowing us to proceed on the substance of all of our constitutional challenges – that the definitions are vague, that the requirement that websites hold verification of the age of adult users for seven years violates privacy, that reverifying the user hourly is too burdensome, the law is overbroad and underinclusive, and finally, that the law is preempted by existing federal law. While this is only a very early stage in the war, we prevailed and can move on to the next stages with our claims intact.”