The Supreme Court enters its teenager era

(CNN) — Like millions of American teens, Kailey Corum is savvy about the dangers of TikTok — but she’s also wary about government efforts to shut it down.

The Virginia high school student uses the platform to catch up on news, listen to music and discover cooking tips. She chooses her words carefully when describing whether she trusts the Supreme Court to decide the fate of an app that 17% of teenagers report using “almost constantly.”

“I don’t put, exactly, full faith into it,” said Corum, a junior, as she stood outside the Supreme Court after a recent tour of the building with her classmates. “But there’s not much personally I can do.”

In the coming months, the Supreme Court will decide a series of blockbuster cases that could significantly transform the lives of the nation’s teenagers — potentially limiting access to vaping products, upholding a ban on transgender care for minors and deciding whether the controversial TikTok law can be squared with the First Amendment.

The appeals have made their way to the justices — including two who still have teenage children — at a moment when lawmakers are engaging in fierce culture war fights over school book bans, transgender student athletes and the teaching of American history – prompting a flood of litigation that is already working its way through federal courts.

The disputes are heating up even as there are signs that young people are especially disillusioned with Washington generally and the Supreme Court specifically. A Marquette Law School poll last week found the high court’s approval among Americans 18-29 stands at 44%, lower than any other age category.

“It does feel like the biggest cases are ones that will directly implicate children’s interests,” said Aaron Tang, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in education law. “I don’t think we should be surprised that more and more cases are going to get to the court directly implicating young people when so many state and local lawmakers are legislating with morality and young people on their minds.”

The Supreme Court added to its “teenager term” on Wednesday by agreeing to hear arguments in the fast-moving challenge to the widely bipartisan TikTok ban President Joe Biden signed in April. The law followed years of concern that TikTok’s Chinese parent company poses a national security risk. It would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the US if its US-based subsidiary makes a clean break from Chinese ownership.

Affected but voiceless

Pediatricians and other experts have for years warned about the potential harms of social media for teenagers, but it was national security — not social science — that ostensibly prompted Congress to approve the TikTok ban. Because of that, the questions now pending at the Supreme Court don’t deal with how young people interact with the app, even though they will be most affected by the court’s decision.

The ban is set to take effect January 19.

“The court, I don’t think, is thinking of this in terms of children,” said Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer, a law professor at Pace University who focuses on social media.

“We all think of TikTok as being essential to teens and content creation — and Ariana Grande doing the ‘Wicked’ dance and everyone mimicking it — but the reason that the ban is in place is not because of that type of content,” Tenzer said. “It’s because of the fear that the People’s Republic of China can manipulate us.”

That disconnect between the legal questions raised in the case and the potential impact on young people and their parents is a theme that runs through several of the major cases this term. A majority of the court’s justices signaled this month they are prepared to back a divisive Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming care for minors. Much of that argument on December 4 focused on whether courts should defer to state lawmakers in making those difficult choices. Far less time was spent on the transgender minors who have described the care as essential.

The court notably declined to consider a question about whether parents have a right to direct care for their children.

A case pending about the Food and Drug Administration’s effort to yank vaping products from shelves, meanwhile, has less to do with the health risks for youth than with whether the agency followed the proper legal protocols when it stepped in to regulate the multibillion-dollar industry. Nineteen percent of high school students vaped in 2020, the FDA says, a far higher share than that of students who smoked.

At the center of both disputes are questions about whether state lawmakers and agencies overstepped when they enacted policies they say are necessary to protect young people. At least one conservative — Justice Clarence Thomas — appeared potentially persuaded by Tennessee’s argument that its transgender care ban applies to people based on age rather that sex and on their medical choices — a distinction that would make it easier for the state to defend the law in federal court.

“So why isn’t this simply a case of age classification when it comes to these treatments as opposed to a ban?” Thomas asked the attorney for the Biden administration.

Texas is making similar arguments in a case the court is set to hear next month concerning a state law that requires age verification for sexually explicit web sites. Opponents, including the porn industry, say the law violates the First Amendment by making it harder for adults to access adult content online. But supporters say the law is first and foremost about safeguarding minors.

“Texas seeks to protect kids from some of the most prurient sexual content imaginable,” attorneys for the state wrote in court papers. “Texas has addressed only websites dedicated to pornography, has allowed them to comply by using common age-verification technology, and has not imposed criminal penalties. Such a modest but important law satisfies any level of scrutiny.”

Disillusionment with SCOTUS

Because of the way lawsuits move through the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court is limited in how it frames its cases and who is heard. While the justices did not grant a separate appeal from the transgender minors and their families affected by Tennessee’s ban, the court did allow their attorney to present arguments earlier this month.

Still, experts say the cases that will affect teenagers that are now pending give attention to young people only secondarily.

“The court isn’t directly evaluating what it thinks will be best for young people,” Tang said. “The court is evaluating whether state lawmakers — or the FDA, in the vaping case — were correct in their assessment of what would be best for young people.”

That worries advocates who work with teenagers, who fear that some of the most contentious fights playing out in Congress and statehouses across the country are more about politics than they are about protecting minors. A Gallup-Walton Family Foundation survey from earlier this year found that 44% of voting-age members of Gen Z said they trust the Supreme Court “very little,” while 20% said they had “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of trust in the court.

“What we have heard from them is an increase in distrust and an increase in disillusionment with government institutions,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, a vice president at Advocates for Youth, a reproductive and sexual rights organization.

“The impact is directly on young people,” she said, “and yet we don’t necessarily hear the voices of young people.”

Spencer Rahim, also a high school junior from Virginia, said that most teenagers he knows manage to find ways around the concerns many have about TikTok. Some, for instance, simply avoid posting personal material.

“To me,” he said, “it’s not really that big of a concern.”

Less certain for Rahim, however, is how the justices will tackle the issue.

“They need to listen to the people a little bit more,” he said.

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