NETCHOICE, LLC v. Hilgers

Complaint

Issue: In *NetChoice, LLC v. Hilgers*, NetChoice argues that Nebraska's Parental Rights in Social Media Act violates the First Amendment by requiring minors to obtain parental consent and all users to verify their age before accessing covered platforms, and by compelling platforms to expose every minor's posts and private messages to parental view. The legal questions are non-obvious because Nebraska's law conditions access on parental consent rather than imposing a categorical ban, a design that existing Supreme Court precedent — which addressed outright prohibitions — does not cleanly resolve, and because the surveillance provisions raise a compelled-disclosure injury that has rarely been litigated in this context.

NetChoice filed this pre-enforcement complaint on May 14, 2026, approximately seven weeks before the Act's July 1, 2026 effective date, opening the case in the District of Nebraska and seeking to halt enforcement before the law takes effect. The complaint advances five principal First Amendment theories: that the consent requirement substitutes state judgment for genuine parental choice; that age-verification requirements burden adult access to protected speech in violation of a well-established line of Supreme Court authority; that the Act's definitional exemptions for curated and commercial content discriminate on the basis of content and speaker identity, triggering strict scrutiny the Act cannot survive; that less-restrictive alternatives already accomplish the State's goals, defeating narrow tailoring; and that mandatory exposure of all minor posts and private messages will chill speech on sensitive topics including abuse and mental health. NetChoice seeks declaratory judgment and both preliminary and permanent injunctive relief against the Attorney General.

This complaint extends a litigation template NetChoice has previously deployed against social-media statutes in Texas, Florida, and other states, but Nebraska's consent-based design — rather than a categorical access ban — presents an open question that no circuit court has yet resolved, making the district court's analysis potentially significant for how similar laws are evaluated nationally. The surveillance theory under §§28(4)(a)–(b) is a less-litigated constitutional theory in this genre of cases and, if it gains traction, could constrain a category of parental-monitoring provisions that legislatures have increasingly favored. The complaint's selective treatment of *Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton* (2025) — which upheld certain age-verification requirements while recognizing the burden they impose — and its underworked engagement with the consent-versus-prohibition distinction are the arguments most likely to be tested as the case moves toward a preliminary-injunction hearing.