Supreme Court lets Texas enforce app store age-verification law while legal challenge continues

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to block a Texas law that requires app stores to verify the ages of their users and to obtain a parent's consent before anyone under 18 can download an app or make a purchase inside one. The order leaves the law in force while a challenge to it moves through the lower courts.

In two brief, unsigned orders issued Monday afternoon, the justices turned down requests from a student advocacy group and a technology trade association to reinstate a federal district judge's rulings that had barred the state from enforcing the measure. There were no public dissents.

What the law does

The statute is Senate Bill 2420, the Texas App Store Accountability Act. It was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2026. It requires app marketplace operators, such as Apple's App Store and Google Play, to verify the ages of all users. Before a person under 18 can download an app or make an in-app purchase, the store must obtain parental consent. The law also requires app developers to state whether an app is appropriate for one of four age groups: children under 13, teenagers 13 to 15, older teenagers 16 to 17, or adults 18 and older.

How the case reached the court

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who sits in Austin, blocked the law in December, finding that it likely violates the First Amendment. In a 20-page ruling, Pitman wrote that the measure "is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office appealed. In late May the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit put Pitman's injunction on hold, which allowed the state to begin enforcing the law while the appeal proceeds. The challengers then asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the injunction. The court declined on Monday without explanation.

The two sides

Two sets of challengers sued in October: the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group that represents app stores and app developers, and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, an advocacy organization. Both argue that SB 2420 violates the First Amendment. In its filing, the CCIA said the law exposes app stores and developers to "enormous and unrecoverable compliance costs" and that its members already offer voluntary parental controls.

"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," CCIA President Matt Schruers said in a statement. Cameron Samuels, co-founder and executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, said in a statement that "students have just as much a right to access information as adults, and this law denies them that access."

Texas argues that the law regulates commercial transactions rather than speech. In a filing, the state compared the restriction to the age limit on a driver's license: "In the same way that the State can deny drivers' licenses to children under sixteen, even though some fourteen-year-olds may wish to drive to a bookstore and purchase a book, the State can restrict children's downloads of software applications to mobile devices as a product category." The state also argued that Pitman applied the wrong constitutional test and that his order was an overly broad "universal injunction" of the kind the Supreme Court limited last year in Trump v. CASA.

"Texas has not only the right, but the duty, to protect children from the harms of our modern digital space," Paxton wrote in a June statement. "Parents deserve to know what their children are downloading and to have the ability to stop them from accessing harmful or inappropriate content."

What happens next

Monday's order is not a ruling on whether the law is constitutional. It leaves the 5th Circuit's stay in place while that court weighs the merits. Schruers said the CCIA expects an expedited hearing before the 5th Circuit in early August.

The Texas measure is part of a broader push by states to require age checks online. Louisiana and Utah have passed similar app store laws that have not yet taken effect. Last year the Supreme Court upheld a separate Texas law requiring age verification for websites that host sexual material.