From banning books to restricting classroom discussions about race and gender, politicians across the country have been busy censoring speech in the name of “protecting the children.” Now they also have their eyes on limiting access to social media.

Arkansas recently passed the Social Media Safety Act, which requires every person to verify their age before they can access existing social media accounts or create new ones. If a user cannot show they are at least 18 years old using a “commercially reasonable age verification method” — potentially including biometric screening or requiring government-issued ID — the law requires them to obtain parental consent to use social media. As the ACLU, the ACLU of Arkansas, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained in a friend-of-the court brief we recently filed in a challenge to the law, these requirements violate the First Amendment. They rob users of anonymity, pose privacy and security risks, and could be used to block some people from being able to use social media at all.

American Civil Liberties Union

ACLU Supports Challenge to Arkansas Law that Places Unconstitutional Age-Verification and Parental Consent Requirements on Social Media Users | American Civil Liberties Union

Arkansas’s “Social Media Safety Act” stifles freedom of expression.

A wealth of communication and expression takes place online. Children and adults use social media to share news, opinions, and ideas; participate in social movements; interact with government representatives; explore their spirituality; and express themselves creatively.

While social media can create echo chambers, it can also expose people to ideas they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Roughly 23 percent of adult social media users told Pew researchers that they “have changed their views about a political or social issue because of something they saw on social media in the last year.” Some social media use might harm a user’s body image, but it also allows people who don’t see their body types represented in mainstream media to share their talents and lived experiences with the world.

While social media can have negative consequences for some teens’ mental health, for others, it can be a lifeline. Paula Sojo’s TikTok account, for example, has become a community for people with chronic illnesses who might otherwise feel isolated and alone. And many young LGBTQ+ people who face discrimination and judgement offline turn to social media for community, exploration, and support. The First Amendment protects the right to engage in all of this speech.

If allowed to go into effect, the Arkansas law would prohibit users from accessing social media anonymously or under a pen name. Age verification requirements can deter even adults from engaging on social media because they worry about sharing additional personal data with social media companies, which could misuse the information or get hacked. And those who don’t have government-issued identification — undocumented immigrants, for example — might be unable to access social media at all. Additionally, the parental consent requirement violates kids’ rights to speak and receive information as well as adults’ right to hear what they have to say. Courts have struck down past government attempts to “protect the children” from all kinds of “dangerous” new communication technologies, from drive-in movies to video games, for these reasons.

American Civil Liberties Union

NetChoice v. Griffin | American Civil Liberties Union

Arkansas’s so-called “Social Media Safety Act” requires users to verify their ages before using social media.

The ACLU consistently fights against laws that purport to protect kids, but ultimately censor and chill speech. After the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) made it a crime to engage in “indecent” or “patently offensive” speech online if the speech could be viewed by a minor, we filed what would become a seminal case on First Amendment rights in the digital age: Reno v. ACLU. We argued, and the Supreme Court ultimately held, that the First Amendment applies with full force online, and the risk that minors will see indecent communications doesn’t justify censoring the internet when alternatives that restrict less speech are available.

The same is true for parental consent requirements. In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to minors — but allowed adults to purchase games for minors — on First Amendment grounds. The court explained that the law was not simply enforcing parental authority over what their kids could access; it was imposing what the government thought parents ought to want their kids to see.

Of course, some parents (and some minors) might decide that the negative consequences of social media use outweigh the benefits. They might choose to impose limitations on their children’s — and their own — social media use. For example, they might forbid their children from using social media until they reach a certain age or level of digital literacy, impose time limits, or leave all devices in a separate room before bed. But those decisions are not for the government to make.

We urge the Western District of Arkansas to protect adults’ and kids’ right to access social media. We all have the right to speak and read about everything from upcoming protests to violin tips to challenging Arkansas’ law.

A religious school can’t be a public school, and a public school can’t be religious. These fundamental legal tenets have long protected both the integrity of our public-education system, which serves all students, and the right of private religious schools to indoctrinate students in accordance with a particular faith. In approving a Catholic public charter school, however, Oklahoma officials are not just blurring these lines separating church and state; they’re attempting to completely eviscerate them. We’re suing to put a stop to it.

American Civil Liberties Union

OKPLAC, Inc. v. Statewide Virtual Charter School Board | American Civil Liberties Union

The ACLU and partners are working with plaintiffs to fight against the sponsoring and funding of the nation’s first religious public charter school.

Oklahoma’s public-school system includes both brick-and-mortar and virtual charter schools. State statutory provisions and the state constitution require these schools and all other public schools to remain open to all students — regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, religion, LGBTQ status, disability, or any other characteristic — and to teach a non-religious curriculum. St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School will do neither. Nevertheless, in June, the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, which authorizes and sponsors online charter schools, approved St. Isidore’s application, setting the school up to receive taxpayer funds and operate as a government entity.

In its application, St. Isidore asserts that it will be managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and will participate “in the evangelizing mission of the Church.” To that end, the school’s application makes clear that it will discriminate in admissions and student discipline, as necessary to satisfy the Catholic Church’s religious beliefs. This means that students could be denied admission or punished based on their religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other failures to comply with Catholic doctrine. St. Isidore even refused to certify that it will not discriminate against students with disabilities if accommodating a student would violate Catholic beliefs. The school also plans to discriminate in employment.

Not surprisingly, St. Isidore’s curriculum will be thoroughly religious, as “the School fully embraces the teachings of the Catholic Church” and will incorporate these teachings “into every aspect of the School,” including all subjects taught and all activities offered. The school aims to ensure all students know and believe that:

• “among all creatures, the human person is the only one created in God’s image with the ability to know and love God, and that God created persons male and female”;
• “because of sin humanity was separated from God, but in God’s love He has provided a path to salvation through the saving power of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, in His suffering, death and resurrection”; and
• “human persons are destined for eternal life with the Holy Trinity but that in freedom, an individual may reject God’s invitation and by this definitive self-exclusion end up in hell.”

A private religious school is, of course, well within its rights to teach these lessons. And churches are free to inculcate these beliefs in Sunday school. But they are wildly unconstitutional in public schools. Indeed, the mere notion of a religious public school is a constitutional oxymoron. This would be true for any proposed religious charter school — whether imposing Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or any other faith on students. Government institutions cannot be religious entities, and that is what St. Isidore is. Even Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general has said that approving St. Isidore as a charter school is unlawful and has vowed to fight it.

Allowing St. Isidore to operate as planned would transform Oklahoma’s public schools into tools of discrimination and religious indoctrination. And, as the first religious public school in the nation, it could inspire copycats in other states, with grave consequences. It would threaten to severely undermine public education, a cornerstone of our democracy, while infringing the religious freedom of students, families, and taxpayers.

Our lawsuit, filed today in Oklahoma state court with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Education Law Center, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, takes a stand against the insidious efforts to co-opt public schools for private, religious interests. We represent Oklahoma faith leaders, parents, and public-education advocates who have had enough. Public schools are not Sunday schools, and we and our allies will fight to keep it that way.

Police violence is a pervasive issue across the country that has led to harassment, injuries, and deaths. Racial discrimination and excessive force disproportionately impact communities of color, which often have an outsized police presence. And although investigations have repeatedly exposed patterns of racism and unconstitutional policing within law enforcement departments, they are rarely held accountable.

Victims who survive unconstitutional policing encounters must contend with a criminal legal system that, due to its own racial biases, wrongfully convicts them or forces them to plead out to fabricated resisting arrest charges—often preventing them from exercising their constitutional right to hold police accountable for their misconduct.

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The ACLU of Louisiana’s Justice Lab aims to combat these injustices. The statewide program, which has already filed more than 50 cases on behalf of individuals challenging police violence, recognizes the systemic and discriminatory nature of police brutality and seeks to put an end to it through litigation and storytelling. It also fulfills an urgent need, as Louisiana law bars civil rights challenges after one year following the incident, and the Supreme Court case Heck v. Humphrey makes it very difficult for people to bring a civil rights challenge seeking money damages for constitutional violations that resulted in their conviction. The Justice Lab represents people who often face significant legal hurdles to accountability, including the use of fabricated legal charges intended to beget their silence.

Here, Anthony Monroe, a Justice Lab client who has experienced police violence firsthand and filed his case after the traditional one-year bar passed, and Alanah Odoms, the ACLU of Louisiana’s executive director, share their insight, experiences, and how they’re fighting back.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The day after Thanksgiving, Mr. Monroe was leaving work after the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift. He passed a slow-moving diesel truck without speeding, and noticed a Louisiana State Trooper parked on the side of the road. The state trooper began following Mr. Monroe, but he was confident he had nothing to worry about because he had done nothing wrong. Then the trooper turned his car’s lights on and pulled him over.

“He got out of his vehicle, had one hand on a flashlight and another hand on his gun. And I’m thinking something about this is not right.

“When I stepped out of my vehicle, that’s when the process started. He grabbed both of my hands, pulling me toward him, and made it look like I was resisting arrest. Another trooper showed up, and they threw me on the ground, [started] jumping on my back and pounding on me, with my hands behind my back.

“They keep pressing down, and I’m screaming ‘Oh my god, I can’t breathe.’ This isn’t supposed to be happening to me. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“He’d been trained to do this. He never de-escalated the situation. He kept making the situation get worse and worse and worse … And after they brutalized me, then I got charged with resisting arrest.

“If you’ve been victimized like this and brutally beaten and attacked, it takes 28 to 34 months for you to get your mind right, because the first year, you’re still having nightmares, you’re waking up with sweats, you’re not being able to sleep, you’re getting up and down.

“And the justice that I’ve gotten so far has been good with the ACLU, but not with the Louisiana state troopers. The system is geared to make money off of people.

“The law should be blind, but it’s not. You shouldn’t have the freedom to abuse people like that in the United States, no matter where you live.

“I hope the law changes after they see what I’ve been through, and what has happened to me…We should be able to live in peace, every day.”

“The ACLU justice lab is a systemic, comprehensive approach to addressing police violence. We want to hold police accountable — and the departments that employ them — so that they can change their policy and conduct. We have filed 50 cases in three years, in every federal jurisdiction in Louisiana.

“This is something that we at the ACLU have decided to take up as a decades-long commitment because we don’t think there’s a silver bullet. There’s not one case that you can file. There’s not one piece of legislation that you can pass that’s going to change this.

“Police violence is an outgrowth — and it’s not just in the South. I think it’s important to state the problems that are endemic to policing, which are white supremacy and toxic masculinity. That’s why we know it’s going to take a sustained approach. It’s going to take a lot of resources, a lot of really smart, dedicated people pushing in the same direction and shifting this narrative.

“What I want folks to know is that we actually have an opportunity to do a lot better by people if we actually change policy. We want something better for our children and for their children, just like our ancestors wanted better for us.”