Supreme Court Allows Texas Age Verification Law for Apps

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to block Texas from enforcing a landmark state law requiring mobile app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before minors can download apps or make in-app purchases. The decision, issued in a pair of one-sentence orders by Justice Samuel Alito with no public dissents, allows the Texas App Store Accountability Act to take effect immediately while constitutional challenges proceed through the courts.

The Law and Its Requirements

The Texas App Store Accountability Act, also known as Senate Bill 2420, was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on May 27, 2025, and was originally scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026. The law requires app stores like Apple’s App Store and Google Play to verify users’ ages using a “commercially reasonable method” and classify them into four categories: child (under 13), younger teen (13–15), older teen (16–17), or adult (18+).

Under the law, parental consent is required for each individual app download or in-app purchase by a minor — blanket approvals are not permitted. App stores must link minors’ accounts to a parent or guardian account. Additionally, app developers must assign age ratings to their apps and purchases and clearly disclose the content or features that informed those ratings, as reported by AP News.

Legal Battle and Court Proceedings

The law faced immediate legal challenges. In October 2025, two groups filed separate lawsuits in federal court in Austin: the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a tech trade group representing app stores and developers, and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), a student advocacy organization. Both argued that the law violates First Amendment free speech rights by conditioning access to apps — which contain protected speech — on age verification and parental consent.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman agreed, issuing a temporary injunction in December 2025 that blocked the law from taking effect. In a 20-page ruling, Pitman wrote that the act is “akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed, and on June 4, 2026, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision. The panel found that the district court likely erred in applying “strict scrutiny” — the most stringent constitutional standard — and ruled that “intermediate scrutiny” was the appropriate standard because the law regulates commercial transactions rather than speech content. The 5th Circuit’s decision allowed the law to take effect while litigation continues.

Challengers then asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that the 5th Circuit’s ruling “would render virtually the entire internet — not to mention the distribution of every book, newspaper, magazine, movie, or record album — ‘commercial speech’ the government could more readily ban, restrict, edit, or compel,” as SCOTUSblog reported.

Arguments For and Against

Texas Solicitor General William Peterson defended the law before the Supreme Court, arguing that “the modern digital world is different” from the physical world and that the law is necessary because children can access “any conceivable content without parental consent or even parental knowledge.” Paxton’s office argued in court filings that a child with a mobile device “can potentially download any number of software applications, potentially agreeing to invasions of the child’s privacy and sale of the child’s data.”

Opponents remain steadfast. Matt Schruers, president of the CCIA, said: “People should not have to turn over personal data to access the internet any more than they should show government identification to enter a bookstore.” Cameron Samuels, co-founder and executive director of SEAT, added: “Students have just as much a right to access information as adults, and this law denies them that access.”

Broader Implications

The Texas law is part of a growing wave of state-level efforts to regulate minors’ access to digital platforms. Louisiana and Utah have passed similar app store laws, and roughly half of all states now have some form of age-verification requirements for minors. The Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas’s law to take effect without comment — and without noted dissents — suggests the Court may be inclined to let states experiment with such regulations while the legal landscape develops.

The case also raises fundamental questions about the boundary between commercial speech and protected expression in the digital age. If the 5th Circuit ultimately upholds the law using intermediate scrutiny, it could embolden other states to pass similar or even more expansive legislation, creating a patchwork of state-level requirements that would pose significant compliance challenges for companies operating nationally.

What’s Next

The 5th Circuit has scheduled an expedited hearing on the law’s constitutionality for early August 2026. If the court upholds the law, the Supreme Court could be asked to hear the case on its merits during the next term. In the meantime, app stores and developers must begin or resume compliance efforts immediately, facing what the CCIA has described as “enormous and unrecoverable compliance costs.”

The outcome of this case could set a critical precedent for how states regulate minors’ access to digital platforms — and how courts balance children’s online safety against First Amendment protections in an increasingly digital world.