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A conservative activist who successfully sued Regional School Unit 22 in Hampden after the school board banned him from its meetingshas sued the board a second time alleging that his right to free speech again has been limited.

Shawn McBreairty,52, of Hampden on Friday filed a lawsuit against Heath Miller, the board chair, and members of the RSU 22 school committee, in U.S. District Court in Bangor.

McBreairty alleged that he was not allowed to speak on Feb. 15 and March 15 during the public comment portion of the school board meeting.

McBreairty claims the rule that forbids negative public comments about district employees is unconstitutional and violates his First Amendment right to free speech. The complaint said that when McBreairty attempted to criticize two teachers by name at the last two meetings, he was shut down.

At the March meeting, Miller had police escort McBreairty out of the meeting and cut the streaming feed, the complaint said.

McBreairtyis seeking a preliminary injunction to force the district to change the rule that he claims allows staff to be praised but not criticized publicly.

Wejust wish that RSU 22 would just respect the First Amendment so we wouldnt have to keep suing them, McBreairtys attorney Marc Randazza said Friday.

Melissa Hewey, the Portland attorney who represents the school district, said late Friday that the district values the free flow of ideas and respects the right, protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, for all citizens to speak out on matters of public concern.

However, RSU 22 also takes very seriously its obligation to protect the dedicated public servants who work for it from being harassed and defamed at public meetings, she said. Despite the allegations in the complaint, the district strongly believes that it did not violate [McBreairtys] rights, but rather did what it is required by law to do in order to protect its employees.

RSU 22is made up of schools in Hampden, Winterport, Newburgh and Frankfort.

McBreairty last year settled a similar lawsuit for $40,000 after a federal judge ruled that the RSU 22 board could not ban him from its meetings.

The Hermon School Department last year sued McBreairtyseeking compensation for money the district spent to support employees after McBreairty allegedly harassed them. That lawsuit is pending in Penobscot County Superior Court with a video hearing on McBreairtys motion to dismiss the lawsuit set for April 27.

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Shawn McBreairty sues Hampden school district again over alleged First Amendment violations - Bangor Daily News

CASE PREVIEW ByAmanda Shanor on Mar 24, 2023 at 1:20 pm

The front entrance of the Supreme Court. (Katie Barlow)

For four years, Helaman Hansen falsely promised undocumented immigrants that they could, for a substantial fee, become U.S. citizens through adult adoption. Although Hansen persuaded more than 450 people to pay him for his services, the program was a ruse that would not lead to citizenship.

On Monday, in United States v. Hansen, the Supreme Court will consider whether 8 U.S.C. 1324(a)(1)(iv), the federal law that criminalizes encouraging or inducing unlawful immigration, violates the First Amendments guarantee of free of speech. The case will have potentially significant effects on immigration enforcement. But it may have an even bigger effect on First Amendment law, with significant implications for dissent, incitement, solicitation and aiding and abetting liability, and social media regulation.

In 2017, Hansen was convicted on federal charges, mostly involving mail and wire fraud, arising from his adult adoption scheme. But Hansen was also convicted on two counts of encouraging or inducing noncitizens to reside in the United States after their visas expired. Those two noncitizens had lawfully entered the United States, but then overstayed their visas because Hansen assured them that participating in the adult adoption program made leaving the U.S. unnecessary. Hansen also employed one of the two to do odd jobs. While violating 8 U.S.C. 1324(a)(1)(iv) for any reason receives 5 years of imprisonment, because the jury found that Hansen had violated the law for financial gain, the court imposed the maximum sentence 10 years for the encouragement counts, to run concurrently with a sentence of 20 years for the fraud counts.

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that Section 1324(a)(1)(iv) violates the First Amendment. It vacated Hansens convictions on those two counts only and remanded for resentencing.

The court of appeals analyzed the law under what is called the overbreadth doctrine, which allows a defendant to whom a law can be constitutionally applied to challenge it as facially unconstitutional (meaning the whole law should be struck down), if the law prohibits a substantial amount of speech protected by the First Amendment. The overbreadth doctrine, like vagueness, is animated by a concern about chilling protected speech. Broad laws may be selectively enforced, and the public may not know what is protected from the law by the First Amendment and what is not so that the resulting uncertainty may chill protected speech.

The federal government came to the Supreme Court, which in December agreed to weigh in.

Defending the constitutionality of the law, the governments central contention is that the statutory terms encourages and induces should be interpreted narrowly as meaning to facilitate or solicit,concepts with defined meanings in criminal law. Based on those meanings, the government argues, a defendant would not violate the law unless he met the standard for aiding or abetting or soliciting a noncitizen to unlawfully enter or reside in the United States. As the government observes, many ordinary criminal laws such as those barring conspiracy, incitement, and solicitation criminalize speech. Those sorts of laws, the government urges, are not ordinarily understood to prohibit abstract advocacy of lawbreaking, however, even when their literal language might encompass it. Moreover, the government maintains that laws prohibiting abetting or encouraging a criminal offense were well established at the Founding, meaning there is no tenable argument that the original understanding of the First Amendment limited statutes that penalize encouragements to specific crimes. The government warns that a broader understanding of encourages or induces would open those other laws to constitutional attack as well. At a minimum, it contends, the court should adopt the governments interpretation to avoid the constitutional questions that would arise if the law was read in a broad, speech-restrictive manner.

The government then uses its interpretation to demonstrate that the law is not substantially overbroad relative to its legitimate sweep the standard the overbreadth doctrine requires. Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv), the government argues, proscribes a substantial amount of non-speech conduct, such as selling fraudulent identification documents or leading noncitizens to the border. It is not enough under the overbreadth doctrine that there is some conceivable unconstitutional application, the government notes; instead, there must be a realistic danger that the law will harm protected speech.(This line of argument appears to be a response to the sorts of hypotheticals that are a centerpiece of Hansens brief, which the government urges are not covered by the law under its interpretation.)

The government also argues that the laws overbreadth must be measured relative not only to the encouraging and inducing provision, but with the enhanced penalty provision that applies if the defendant committed the offense for financial gain. To the extent that the law reaches speech, the government argues, it only covers speech integral to illegal activity, which does not offend the First Amendment. At a minimum, it says, Hansen has failed to show the kind of substantial overbreadth to strike down the statute on its face.

Finally, the government criticizes the overbreadth doctrine generally as a departure from both the traditional rules favoring as-applied constitutional challenges and disfavoring third-party rights. To justify invalidating the statute entirely, the government asserts, Hansen would need to show that the normal course of constitutional adjudication cant address chilling effects, which it says Hansen has failed to do.

For his part, Hansen argues that the statute is substantially overbroad in violation of the First Amendment because the plain meaning of its text extends to a plethora of ordinary interactions that the First Amendment protects. He argues that, for example, the law makes it a crime for:

Hansen says these examples encourage a civil violation at most, because residing in the United States unlawfully is not a crime.

Hansen argues that the courts overbreadth analysis should focus only on the provision that criminalizes encourages or induces, which was enacted in 1986 and doesnt require any purpose. The provision that enhanced the penalty for offenses committed for financial gain was added separately in 1996.

Next, Hansen argues that the government is wrong to equate encouraging or inducing with aiding and abetting and solicitation. Congress, he points out, removed the words solicitation and assistance from an earlier version of the law, and there is a separate federal law prohibiting soliciting or aiding and abetting certain crimes, including the law at issue here.

Hansen also contends that the interpretation the government now advances bears no resemblance to the one it advocated at trial. There, Hansen asserts, the government argued that the statute should be applied according to its plain meaning and opposed an instruction requiring intent, which Hansen says is central to solicitation and aiding-and-abetting crimes. And the jury was not instructed that encourage should be read as anything other than its ordinary meaning. For that reason, Hansen contends, even if the court adopts the governments statutory interpretation, his conviction should be vacated and remanded for consideration under that construction.

Finally, Hansen asserts that the laws ban on encouragement without any requirement that the speaker specifically intended the listener to violate the law or that the violation was likely or imminent goes beyond the speech the First Amendment does not protect under the categories of incitement, solicitation, or aiding and abetting. The governments argument, he argues, would turn on its head the long line of cases involving speech advocating illegal conduct. Under that caselaw, the First Amendment shields speakers from liability unless their speech is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, likely to incite or produce such action, and the speakers specifically intend that their listeners violate the law. Because the First Amendment exception for speech integral to criminal conduct has always been limited to criminal conduct, not civil violations, Hansen argues, the government effectively seeks a new category of unprotected speech.

This case has implications that go far beyond immigration enforcement. For one, the courts have never worked out the relationship between incitement (which requires intent, imminency, and likelihood), solicitation, or aiding-and-abetting liability (which arent covered by the First Amendment at all), and speech integral to criminal conduct (which, other than being about speech and crime, is fairly fuzzy in the caselaw). Might the courts holding here weaken any of those standards? These issues may significantly alter the trajectory of First Amendment law with broad implications. For example, the courts holding may affect the standard applicable to former President Donald Trumps speech before the storming of the Capitol on January 6, were he to be indicted for incitement.

This case may also intersect with two other high-profile cases now before the court: Google v. Gonzalez and Twitter v. Taamneh, both of which involve the scope of social media companies liability for terrorist speech on their platforms. If the court allows a broader constitutional sweep for liability in Hansen, it could affect those cases and potentially the liability of social media companies not only for aiding-and-abetting crimes, but civil violations (such as defamation) too. We can only speculate, but I feel sure that the justices are also thinking about these implications.

Hansen may also offer us insight into this courts approach to speech law. Will it continue an earlier courts trend of adopting ever more speech-protective rules or chart a different course?

Well have to wait and see. The only wager Ill make is that at argument we will hear many wild hypotheticals.

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Does the federal law that prohibits encouraging or inducing unlawful immigration violate the First Amendment? - SCOTUSblog

This week, the president of West Texas A&M University canceled a student group's upcoming drag show. The move was unconstitutionaland he knew it.

"I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to require it," he wrote.

Now the school is facing a lawsuit, which alleges that the president's conduct violated students' First Amendment rights.

On Monday, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler announced in an email to students that he was going to cancel a drag show hosted by Spectrum WT, a student LGBT group. Wendler made it clear that he was canceling the performancewhich was a charity event raising funds for the Trevor Project, an LGBT suicide-prevention groupbecause it offended him personally.

"I believe every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, a person of dignity," wrote Wendler. "Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not."

Wendler went so far as to compare drag to blackface in order to justify his censorship. "As a university president, I would not support 'blackface' performances on our campus, even if told the performance is a form of free speech or intended as humor. It is wrong," he wrote. "I do not support any show, performance or artistic expression which denigrates othersin this case, womenfor any reason."

However, Wendler seemed aware that he was engaging in unconstitutional censorship. In a blog post, he wrote that he knew the "law of the land appears to require" him to allow the performance, yet he would proceed in canceling it anyway.

On Friday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression announced that it had filed a lawsuit against Wendler and other university administrators, with the student group's president and vice president acting as plaintiffs.

"President Wendler's edict canceling the student group's charity drag show is textbook viewpoint discrimination," reads FIRE's complaint. "Of course, as a private citizen, President Wendler enjoys the First Amendment right to criticize expression he finds offensive, distasteful, or immoral. But as a public official, he cannot bar Spectrum WT and its members from exercising their First Amendment rights merely because he believes his personal opinions override the Constitution."

The lawsuit was filed after FIRE sent a letter to Wendler reminding him of his legal obligations and urging him to reinstate the performance. After the letter was ignored, FIRE filed suit.

"President Wendler has made it clear to us that he knows what his legal obligations are, but he chose to ignore them," Spectrum WT President Bear Bright said in a Friday press release. "Hopefully, this lawsuit will not just help us the LGBTQ+ students here at WTAMU protect our rights, but also help protect students' rights across the U.S."

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College President Cancels Drag Show After Saying It's Protected by 'Law of the Land' - Reason

A Bloomberg Law columnist is upset that students at Yale Law School didnt protest the First Amendment and shout down an invited speaker, James Ho, a Trump-appointed judge who sits on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

On March 15, Ho spoke at Yale Law School, and according to Vivia Chens opinion essay, his commentary went uninterrupted by angry student protesters.

Following closely on the heels of another Trump-appointed 5th Circuit judge, Kyle Duncan, being shouted down by Stanford Law students, the fact that Hos speech was able to proceed without inciting mass hysteria should come as a surprise to many, Chen included.

By now, its obvious that college students feel emboldened to shout down speakers with whom they disagree or, as is often the case, threaten violence to prevent said speakers from being a part of the conversation at all.

Chen not only thinks thats acceptable, but apparently feels that not threatening speakers should be cause for concern. She goes a step further to claim that holding disruptive students accountable for their actions constitutes a form of modern-day McCarthyism.

The argument that speech deemed offensive by some should be restricted fails to persuade in court. Precedent establishes that universities have a responsibility to uphold the unfettered expression of ideas on campus on First Amendment groundsand for good reason.

From the countrys revolutionary birth to the social movements that have molded the nation into a fairer and better democracy, the First Amendment lies at the core of episodic events that inform meaningful change.

Allowing hostile audiences to dictate which speech is acceptable fuels a burgeoning cancel culture that is antithetical to the constitutional freedoms that underpin fundamental civil rights. While words carry with them the inevitable capacity to offend, that should be an invitation to productive, respectful, and lively debate, not cause for censorship.

If such speech is so intolerable, the most practical solution for students is to not attend the event.

Another solution to dissuade students from shouting down speech they deem personally offensive would be to penalize them for not only violating the First Amendment, but disregarding university policy.

Rules are the clear standards detailed in university policy that dictate what will and will not be tolerated. The former dean of Berkeley Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky, defends this construct, stating; Colleges and universities must be clear and emphatic that attempting to shut down such events will not be tolerated and those engaging in it face disciplinary action.

Key to that is the commitment to disciplinary action. If students are not in some way held accountable for breaking rules and flouting policy, universities are validating their behavior as acceptable. Faculty should likewise face disciplinary action for encouraging violent and disruptive heckling, as was the case at Stanford last week.

Ho and 11th Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch vouched their support for holding disruptive students accountable. Acknowledging that many universities have demonstrated an unwillingness to impose any consequences on student disrupters, Ho and Branch suggest that at a minimum they should identify the disrupters so that future employers know who they are hiring.

Thats a wild and lame idea, according to Chen, who argues that, by making that suggestion, Ho and Branch are proposing a form of academic McCarthyism. She goes as far as to draw a parallel between schools holding students accountable for their actions to the FBI creating blacklists.

So, its acceptable to censor individuals when elitists in the media collaborate to do it, but if anyone suggests a consequence for bad behavior that runs counter to exercising restraint and demonstrating the qualities we want in an impartial judicial system, thats a threat to democracy?

Chens assertion that respecting the First Amendment equates to McCarthyism, though absurd, is yet another claim that can only be viewed as disappointing but not surprising.

Setting aside the concept of free speech for a moment, it seems rather harsh to condemn a 20-something to a forever no-fly list for rude behavior, Chen writes.

This no-fly list is simply keeping tabs on disrespectful students who break the rules. It seems reasonable that professionals in the business of upholding the nations laws might want to know which young crusaders for justice dont respect them. Chens arguments leave us to wonder if her real agenda might be to set aside free speech indefinitely, rather than for a moment.

Rude behavior is also apparently defined as treating invited guests with hateful, expletive-laced verbal assaults, damage to property, and threats of physical violence.

At Stanford, student protesters told Duncan they hoped his daughters would be raped. Instead of accepting this behavior as the norm, it would behoove universities to encourage decorum. Universities are failing to prepare their students for the real world by not seizing on these opportunities to teach about the values of professionalism and respect.

The argument that students have a right to shout down speech they deem personally offensive is legally unconvincing and societally harmful. Universities must take every step necessary to aggressively dispel disrupters of the notion that they hold the power of censorship by not giving into the demands of disgruntled students, emphasizing the option of non-attendance, and holding students who violate university policy publicly accountable.

From an ethical and societal perspective, theres a need to uphold our God-given rights as enshrined in the First Amendment. Theres no place these rights should be more valued and sacred than at institutions of higher educationand especially at law schools.

Decorum is not old-fashioned, and universities who fail to teach it are failing their students. No employer wants to hire a loose cannon who disrespects colleagues instead of listening and having honest dialogue. Employers seek professionalism and teamwork, not unprofessional liabilities.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please emailletters@DailySignal.comand well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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Is Insisting Law Students Respect 1st Amendment Akin to 'McCarthyism'? - Daily Signal

Sitting before a handful of lawmakers, policy experts and stakeholders, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on Thursday signed into law some of the countrys first and most restrictive social media regulations.

The bills, lawmakers say, are described as tools for parents, giving them greater control over their childrens social media use, while mandating that companies like Meta or TikTok implement and change certain policies aimed at minors. One of the most notable changes is that all Utahns will soon have to show some form of identification to use social media.

Summed up by Cox, the legislation significantly changes the relationship of our children with these very destructive social media apps.

Sponsored by Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, SB152 would enact the Utah Social Media Regulation Act, requiring a social media company to verify the age of a Utah resident before opening an account. For prospective users under 18 years old, the bill directs the social media company to obtain the consent of a parent or guardian before the account is live.

And HB311, sponsored by Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, prohibits social media companies from using a design or feature that causes a minor to have an addiction to the companys social media platform.

Both bills passed with broad support in the House and Senate.

These are first of their kind bills in the United States. And thats huge that Utah is leading out on this effort, Cox said. We have lots of states that are interested and I know were all having conversations with other governors, other legislators and other states. I suspect that you will see lots of bills like these moving forward.

But the bills have been criticized by First Amendment and online privacy experts, who say its unlikely Utah will be able to enact such regulations without seeing a court challenge.

Conditioning these rights on a parent giving prior consent is a huge First Amendment problem. Minors have First Amendment rights, and they are limited in more circumstances than for adults, but still only in very narrow circumstances, said Ari Cohn, a First Amendment lawyer based in Chicago, noting those circumstances almost entirely revolve around sexually explicit material.

The government is actually saying you have to provide your identity to speak in the first place on social media, Cohn said.

Cohn and Cox previously sparred on Twitter, ironically, with Cohn citing those same First Amendment concerns, and Cox responding: You are wrong and Im excited to prove it.

Gov. Spencer Cox poses for a photo after signing SB152, Social Media Regulation Amendments, at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, March 23, 2023.

Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

Titled Social Media Regulation Amendments, SB152 gives social media companies a list of requirements, should a parent consent to their child creating an account. The law instructs companies to:

The law also directs the Utah Division of Consumer Protection to receive and investigate violations of the law, and impose fines and civil penalties up to $2,500 for each violation. The division will also publish an annual report evaluating the liability and enforcement provisions of this chapter, the bill reads.

The law includes a fiscal note of roughly $280,000 in one-time funds and $220,000 in ongoing funds for the division to investigate and enforce violations.

And HB311, titled Social Media Usage Amendments, seeks to curb what Teuscher and other lawmakers say are addictive algorithms that cause kids to go down that rabbit hole where they feel anxious because they dont have their phone next to them.

It permits the Division of Consumer Protection to audit records of a social media company to determine its compliance, and paves the way for a civil penalty of $250,000 for each practice, design, or feature shown to have caused addiction.

Addiction is defined in the bill as use of a social media platform that ... indicates the users substantial preoccupation or obsession with, or the users substantial difficulty to cease or reduce use of, the social media platform; and causes physical, mental, emotional, developmental, or material harms to the user.

The bill is expected to cost $181,000 in one-time funds and $220,000 in ongoing funds for enforcement.

The regulations spelled out in both bills will take place on March 1, 2024.

Both Cox, McKell and Teuscher on Thursday pointed to the dire mental health situation for minors, which prompted the legislation.

I had been doing some research on my own, worried about my own kids and the impact that social media was having on them, the impact it was having on me and looking at the research that was out there, said Cox

In general, there is an epidemic of mental health issues plaguing teens a recent Center for Disease Control and Prevention study found that 30% of teenage girls seriously considered attempting suicide, and 50% had sustained periods of loneliness and depression.

I compare social media to something like tobacco because it has a catastrophic impact, and the impact that we see is diminished mental health, and its a huge problem cyber bullying is a huge problem, and when weve got 30% of our girls considering suicide, we should step in, McKell told the Deseret News Thursday.

While there is a bevy of research pointing to a strong link between prolonged social media use and depression, anxiety, loneliness,self-harm, andsuicidal thoughts, that CDC study in particular does not cite social media use, and Cohn said both bills take a a startlingly broad position.

There are so many things that minors do on social media that are entirely non-problematic, he said. And trying to evade the bad things by cutting them off from social media entirely before parent consent is just so wrong that it cant possibly pass constitutional muster.

Cohn says hell be surprised if much time passes before individual companies or trade associations sue the state over the laws. States have tried things like this before, he said.

Cox recently told reporters hes confident the state will prevail in court, echoed by Teuscher on Thursday.

We expect that it will likely be challenged, but we feel really confident that we drafted the bills in such a way that they wont be susceptible to challenges, he said.

Any companies challenging the laws will have years of precedent on their side. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the internet a free speech zone in Reno v. ACLU. And in 2011, the same court said a California law limiting the sales of violent video games to minors violated the First Amendment in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.

Cox has previously said prior cases were wrongly decided, and that the internet has evolved since the rulings, though he did not offer specifics.

Is the court really likely to upend decades of precedent? I think thats less likely than the governor would imagine, Cohn said. And I dont think this court will find itself less committed to these basic principles ... Im not seeing a roadmap that if I were Gov. Cox, I would feel supremely confident about.

Cohn isnt alone in his criticism, and Utahs new laws have raised the eyebrows of numerous First Amendment and family advocates.

The bill does not consider childrens and teens rights, or their need for agency and independence, wrote the Family Online Safety Institute.

These bills, while trying to solve a real problem with minors and social media usage, would be an unprecedented intrusion on Utahns rights to privacy and freedom of expression, Americans for Prosperity said in a statement.

If Im a kid feeling really abused in my house, Im feeling rejected because of, say, my gender or sexual identity, and I know that my parent can access (the social media account) at any time by law, I might be less likely to actually engage in the process, and I might feel more alone than ever, Sarah Coyne, a professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University, said in a recent radio interview.

When reached for comment, a Meta spokesperson said the company will continue to work with experts, lawmakers and parents on the issues brought up by Utah lawmakers.

We want teens to be safe online. Weve developed more than 30 toolsto support teens and families, including tools that let parents and teens work together to limit the amount of time teens spend on Instagram, and age verification technology that helps teens have age-appropriate experiences. We automatically set teens accounts to private when they join Instagram, and we send notifications encouraging them to take regular breaks. We dont allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and of the content we remove or take action on, we identify over 99% of it before its reported to us, the spokesperson said.

Because the bills arent slated to take effect for another year, its likely lawmakers will revisit the issue in the legislatures next general session. Plus, the age verification process, which McKells bill hinges on, still needs to be created by the Division of Consumer Protection and will likely require coordination from social media companies.

Come to the table, work with us, Teuscher said in a message to social media companies. If there are better solutions than what we have in these bills, well implement them. Well pass them at the beginning of next session. But right now the clock is ticking. They understand whats going to happen if they dont take any action.

The question of age verification is another sticking point for First Amendment and privacy experts. McKell on Thursday said it cant be limited to a government form of ID, and that lawmakers and the division are looking for other options.

Cohn says that will have sweeping implications for everyone.

This is not only going to apply to kids. You cant figure out who is a minor or who is not a minor, unless you age verify everyone. So the implications for anonymous speech are huge, too, he said. ... There is a data point somewhere that will exist, that connects you to those posts. There is no more anonymity. And this country was built on anonymous speech.

McKell tried to quell those concerns, telling the Deseret News in this legislation, our consumer privacy laws trump everything. Your privacy will be protected.

Another item that several experts questioned is how to define addictive in Teuschers bill.

Its very difficult to surmise what people mean by addictive when they're talking about social media, said Cohn, noting that the entire premise of a media company is to keep its customers engaged. He likened it to your favorite addicting TV show.

Teuscher said his bill is strictly targeting algorithms, saying theres a big difference between that and just presenting information.

(HB311) allows for these social media companies to report quarterly to the Department of Commerce and have an independent audit that shows that those algorithms haven't been built to cause minors to be addicted to these platforms, he said.

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Utah social media law will limit teen use amid mental health crisis - Deseret News