Tenn. AG: Enjoined Ohio Age-Verification Law Decision Was Wrong
Tennessee's attorney general told a federal district court Thursday that a case about an Ohio law requiring age verification is wrong and dissimilar from one before it concerning a Tennessee age-verification law. AG Jonathan Skrmetti (R) urged the court to ignore the decision in NetChoice v. Yost and deny a preliminary injunction against his state's law.
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In the Ohio case, NetChoice v. Yost, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio enjoined the age-verification law on First Amendment grounds (see 2504160049). Trade association NetChoice, which sued Tennessee over HB-1891 in case 24-01191, asked the district court to use the Ohio decision in its ruling in the Tennessee case. However, Skrmetti argued that the Yost decision violated recent precedent.
"In Yost, NetChoice won the easier relief of summary judgment against a law that the district court had already enjoined and that was therefore not being enforced," the AG said. Further, "to the extent that Yost is similar, it is wrong."
Skrmetti cited two recent -- and binding -- precedents that were allegedly ignored in Ohio: TikTok v. Garland and Free Speech Coalition v. Skrmetti. In the TikTok case, the court upheld that the social media platform could be banned because the government's justification was content-neutral; but in Yost, the district court found the state's content-neutral justification was "constitutionally irrelevant." Similarly, Free Speech Coalition required the court to evaluate all applications of a law, and determine which are constitutional and which are not. The Ohio case didn't do that, said Skrmetti.