A tech industry group filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging a Minnesota law that requires social media companies to start showing users health warning labels on their sites.
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“Warning: The app may repeatedly show similar or upsetting content, which may negatively affect your mental health. Use tools (mute, unfollow, “not interested”) to change what you see. Support is available: Call/text 988 or visit 988Lifeline.org”
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“Warning: Infinite scrolling and videos that play automatically may make it difficult to stop. Extended use may affect sleep, school, work, and mood. Call/text 988 or visit 988Lifeline.org”
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“Comparing yourself to “perfect” posts? Call/Text 988 or visit 988Lifeline.org. Warning: Many images are edited and may affect self-esteem and mood.”
These are just a few examples of the type of pop-up warnings designed by the Minnesota Department of Health that users of social media in Minnesota will see starting July 1 if the law passed in the 2025 legislative session goes into effect.
NetChoice — an industry group representing social media and tech companies like Amazon, Google and Meta — is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Brooke Cunningham in federal court. NetChoice argues in the complaint filed Wednesday that part of the law violates the First Amendment by requiring social media platforms to express “the government’s preferred message.”
The health warnings are “designed to block, burden, and browbeat” social media users, the complaint reads.
The Minnesota-based national suicide prevention nonprofit SAVE, Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, supports Minnesota’s warning label law and condemned the lawsuit Wednesday.
“NetChoice can try to frame this lawsuit as a fight about free speech, but at its core it is really about Big Tech using millions of dollars, lawyers, and lobbyists to defeat measures intended to protect children and families online,” said Erich Mische, CEO of SAVE, in a statement.
A spokesperson told MPR News on Wednesday the attorney general’s office is reviewing the lawsuit.
Advocates of health warnings for social media say the platforms carry health risks — especially for children — that justify health warnings, just like physical products like tobacco and alcohol. In 2024, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels.
“The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor,” Murthy wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times. He cited research that has connected increased social media usage with increased mental health problems in young people.
Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, led the effort in 2025 to get Minnesota’s law passed.
“If you had expected big tobacco to make cigarettes less addictive in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you would have been sorely mistaken. They would never have done that. Addiction was their business model. And the same thing is true for big tech,” Stephenson said last year.
Minnesota isn’t alone in requiring health labels for social media. California, New York and Colorado have passed social media warning legislation, though a federal court paused Colorado’s law after NetChoice filed a similar lawsuit.
NetChoice also filed a lawsuit against Ellison last year over another Minnesota law that requires social media companies to explain their algorithms to users. A judge has yet to rule in that case.
MPR News correspondent Dana Ferguson contributed to this reporting.
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