Freedom Forum

The social media app Bluesky is blocking Mississippi users instead of complying with that state’s age verification law. The decision comes after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed enforcement of the law while the tech trade group NetChoice challenges it in court.
Mississippi passed its law last year, with the goal of protecting minors from harmful conduct online. It requires social media and other web platforms to check users’ ages, obtain parental consent for users under 18, and identify and track which users are children.
In a statement explaining its decision, Bluesky said that while child safety is a “core priority,” compliance with the law would be onerous for the small company.
“We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies,” Bluesky said. Bluesky will block Mississippi users while the courts decide whether to let the law stand.

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Prosecutors in Minnesota filed misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges against a woman accused of using a racial slur against a Black child during an April incident at a Rochester playground.
The criminal complaint alleges Shiloh Hendrix engaged in “offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language that would reasonably tend to arouse alarm, anger or resentment in others.”
The child’s father later told police that his 8-year-old son is autistic and doesn’t understand typical social boundaries and requires intensive supervision. The father said he saw his son take an applesauce pouch from someone else's diaper bag and chased him to get it back. Hendrix chased the child, too, repeatedly calling him a racial epithet.
A bystander recorded the episode and confronted Hendrix, whom the complaint notes “admitted to calling the child” the slur; the video later went viral on social media.
Hendrix has since posted on the fundraising platform GiveSendGo to raise money to relocate her family in the wake of the incident. In a recent post, she wrote, “I will be fighting back. ... In the United States, we are protected by the First Amendment, and no amount of hurt feelings can change that.”

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A record number of states now have laws that protect Americans’ free speech rights from frivolous lawsuits, according to the “2025 Anti-SLAPP Report Card” from the Institute for Free Speech.
The institute’s report grades each state’s legal protections against SLAPP suits, which stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” SLAPP suits are meritless lawsuits aimed at silencing or suppressing speech.
The District of Columbia and 37 states now have anti-SLAPP laws as deterrents, according to the report, which estimates the laws protect 86.2% of the population. The institute also indicates state lawmakers often have passed these speech-protective laws with overwhelming bipartisan support.
But there are some dark spots: The institute gave a grade of “D” to six states because their laws lack certain key protections available in many others, while 12 states earned an “F” for having no anti-SLAPP laws at all.
While hailing the positive trends, Institute for Free Speech President David Keating says there’s still room to improve.
“We hope that the remaining ‘D’ and ‘F’ states will soon adopt strong laws, and that Congress will also move quickly to pass an anti-SLAPP law that provides an essential safeguard for free expression,” Keating said.

More from Freedom Forum: ‘How Anti-SLAPP Laws Protect Your Right to Free Speech’

Speaking of which, here’s a story about an anti-SLAPP law in action.
Falling in Reverse front man Ronnie Radke has lost his defamation lawsuit against music critic Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drop.
The dispute began in 2023 over a video Fantano posted titled “This Guy Sucks,” in which he called Radke “quite possibly the biggest living piece of trash in the world of rock music right now.” Fantano not only criticized the rocker’s music but also discussed the singer’s criminal history and his combative behavior on social media.
Radke sued Fantano for defamation last year after Fantano rejected Radke’s request to take the video down. Radke’s complaint says the video went “outside the bounds of permissible commentary and extends well into the realm of actionable innuendo, unfounded rumormongering and outright untruth.”
In his video “He Sued Me (I WON),” posted in late August, Fantano notes that Connecticut, where he lives, has an anti-SLAPP law. He explained to his viewers this allowed him to tell the court, “I believe I am exercising my free speech and my journalistic rights, and the only reason this lawsuit is being filed is to silence me, essentially.” Fantano explained that now, Radke will have to pay Fantano back his legal fees.
In Radke’s response video, he admitted his lawyers told him he had little chance of winning the suit, but Radke pursued the case anyway. “I just really wish that [Fantano] would retract what he said and apologize for implying all these things, but he won’t,” Radke said.

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The First Amendment isn’t just a history lesson — it’s a daily tool to use on public university campuses where the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition should thrive. That’s why we developed our First Amendment on Campus program that officially kicked off Aug. 24 at the University of Virginia.

Nearly 5,000 new UVA students received the UVA edition of the "Students’ Guide to the First Amendment," a primer on relevant First Amendment topics at a public university. Students also heard encouraging words from university leaders to know their rights and find their voice. Learn more about the program at FreedomForum.org/1A-on-Campus. 