Florida sues TikTok over its child social-media law

Florida has sued TikTok, accusing the app of breaking the state’s law restricting minors’ access to social media and of misleading parents about what their children would find there. Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the suit on 15 June, filing it in St. Lucie County Circuit Court.

The complaint alleges TikTok illegally let minors onto the platform, misrepresented the nature of the content available to them, and used addictive design features built to keep children scrolling.

It cites two statutes: House Bill 3, Florida’s social-media law for minors, and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The state is seeking an injunction, civil penalties, and other remedies.

The law at the centre of the case is strict. HB 3, which took effect on 1 January 2025, bars children under 14 from holding social-media accounts outright and requires 15- and 16-year-olds to have a parent’s consent before signing up.

The suit is the first major enforcement action Florida has brought under it, which makes the case a test of the statute as much as of the company.

That test matters because age-gating laws of this kind have run into legal trouble across the United States, where courts have repeatedly weighed them against First Amendment objections from the platforms and from free-speech groups.

Florida is now asking a court to apply HB 3 to a specific defendant, and how the case fares will signal how much of the law survives contact with the constitution.

Florida has been among the more aggressive states on this front. It recently became the first to sue OpenAI and named Sam Altman personally over ChatGPT’s effects on children, and HB 3 itself is one of the stricter under-16 social-media laws in the country.

The TikTok suit extends a pattern in which the state has tried to lead on technology child-safety enforcement rather than wait for federal action, which has been slow to arrive.

TikTok is a familiar defendant in this arena. The company has faced a wave of child-safety actions from states and school districts, some settled before trial, and it has generally argued that it offers parental controls and age-appropriate protections. Its response to the Florida complaint was not detailed in the initial coverage.

The company has elsewhere said it provides parental controls, age-appropriate experiences, and tools to limit how long younger users spend in the app, and it has contested the premise of several state actions rather than settling them outright.

The political framing was plain enough. “Time is up,” Uthmeier said in announcing the action, casting it as a move to hold the platform to a law already on the books. If the courts agree that TikTok broke it, and whether HB 3 holds up when they look closely, are the questions the filing now sets in motion.