Reddit challenges Australia's under-16 social-media law in the High Court

On 12 December 2025 Reddit, Inc. filed a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia against the Commonwealth, seeking to overturn or avoid being captured by the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024. That law, passed in late 2024, requires designated social-media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from holding accounts, with potential penalties for non-compliance and an effective requirement that platforms verify the age of users.

Reddit's filing argued that the age-restriction scheme impermissibly burdens the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication. Australia has no general bill of rights, but the High Court has long recognised an implied freedom protecting communication on government and political matters as a structural feature of the Constitution's system of representative government. Reddit's case contended that excluding under-16 users from the platform, and forcing age verification on everyone, would chill and obstruct that protected communication, and it sought declarations that the law was invalid or that Reddit should not be designated under it.

The challenge was notable because Reddit positioned itself as distinct from larger image- and video-centric networks, characterising itself as a primarily text-based forum oriented around discussion and information-sharing rather than algorithmic feeds aimed at minors. The company framed mandatory age verification as both a practical burden and a privacy intrusion, echoing arguments it and other platforms had made about age-assurance mandates in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Importantly, Reddit indicated it would continue to comply with the law while the litigation proceeded, rather than defying the regime. The matter was a pending civil challenge in the High Court's original jurisdiction, not a resolved ruling; at the time of filing no decision on the merits had been issued, and the outcome — including whether the court would even reach the constitutional question or instead resolve the case on narrower grounds about designation — remained open.

The case represented a rare instance of a major platform directly litigating the validity of a national social-media age law rather than simply lobbying against it or quietly complying. It tied together threads running through Reddit's regulatory history worldwide: the global wave of age-verification and minor-protection mandates, the platform's repeated objections that such rules impose privacy and free-expression costs, and the open legal question of how far governments can go in conditioning access to online discussion spaces on proof of age.