A federal appellate court has upheld a lower court ruling for IMDb.com Inc. finding that a California law aimed at fighting age discrimination in the entertainment industry is unconstitutional.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found Friday that California's AB 1687, which would force the publisher of the Internet Movie Database to honor the request of anyone who uses its paid professional networking site to remove all age information from the public-facing IMDb.com, violated the First Amendment.

"Here, the state has not explored, or even considered, a less restrictive means to combat age discrimination in the entertainment industry before resorting to the drastic step of restricting speech," wrote Ninth Circuit Judge Bridget Bade. "Unlawful age discrimination has no place in the entertainment industry, or any other industry. But not all statutory means of ending such discrimination are constitutional," wrote Bade, in an opinion joined by Ninth Circuit Judges Johnnie Rawlinson and Mark Bennett.

A spokesperson for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his office was reviewing the decision. Douglas Mirell of Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger, who represented the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television, which sponsored the bill and intervened to defend it, didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment Friday.

John Hueston of Hueston Hennigan, who represented IMDb in the lawsuit, said that the opinion "establishes that the state cannot censor speech, despite how the state labels that speech, and reinforces the centrality of an open marketplace of ideas."

IMDb originally sued to block the law in November 2016 less than two months before it was set to go into effect at the beginning of 2017. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction in February 2017 finding the law violated the First Amendment since it barred IMDb from publishing factual information on its public website. Chhabria, who later entered a permanent injunction, also found that the law was unlikely to make a dent in Hollywood's age discrimination problem since it targeted a single website.

On appeal, the law's backers argued that it was narrowly tailored since it applied only to subscribers of IMDbPro, the company's professional networking site for the entertainment industry, who request that their age information not be published. They also argued that the limitation was justified since IMDb is the principal source of the age information available to people making hiring decisions in the industry.

But in Friday's opinion, Bade found that the restrictions imposed on publishing factual information weren't justified given that the law only targeted IMDb and that the state has other means to address discrimination in the entertainment industry. 

"The statute does not restrict only information misappropriated through the parties' contractual relationship; it also prohibits the publication of information submitted by members of the public with no connection to IMDb," Bade wrote. "These restrictions apply regardless of whether an IMDb public profile existed independent of, or prior to, any contractual agreement between IMDb and an IMDbPro subscriber."

Mary-Christine Sungaila of Haynes and Boone, who represented a group of  First Amendment scholars and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in an amicus brief backing IMDb, argued that if the law weren't struck down, there would be virtually no limit on the government's ability to suppress the reporting of true facts by other sources, including the media.

"The court's decision reaffirms the First Amendment's scope and importance in the online context, and offers guidance about the appropriate interplay between efforts to address discrimination and free speech guarantees," she said.