The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Texas to enforce a state law that requires app stores to verify a user’s age and obtain parental consent before a minor downloads or purchases an app on a cell phone, the Associated Press and others reported.
According to SCOTUSblog, the law is called the Texas App Store Liability Act (SB 2420). SB 2420 primarily requires Apple and Google app stores to use “commercially reasonable methods” to verify the age of account users, but the law does not specify what those methods are. If your account belongs to a user under 18 years of age, you must link your parent or guardian’s account to obtain permission to download or purchase.
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Two groups, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and Students Engaged for Texas Advancement, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the law. Both argue that the law violates their First Amendment right to free speech.
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In December 2025, U.S. District Judge Robert Pittman temporarily blocked enforcement of the law, but last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit put those orders on hold, SCOTUSblog reported. In response, each group filed a petition with the Supreme Court.
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On July 6, Justice Samuel Alito dismissed both petitions and allowed the law to survive.
“Each time the law is enacted, petitioners are denied their fundamental rights to organize, advocate, express ideas, and discover new perspectives through the most important medium of human communication,” Texas Development Students attorneys said in their filing.
“No state has ever required citizens to prove their age before reading a newspaper, entering a bookstore, or even accessing the Internet. Texas Senate Bill 2420…does exactly that for every mobile app on every cell phone,” lawyers for the Computer and Communications Industry Association said in a filing.
“Parents have the right to know what their children are downloading and have the ability to prevent them from accessing content that is harmful or inappropriate,” Attorney General Ken Paxton, a defendant in both cases, said in the June 1st decision by the Court of Appeals.
Last year, SCOTUS upheld Texas’ age verification law, requiring similar age verification for viewing explicit content.
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