Supreme Court Declines To Block Texas App Store Law

Texas can enforce a law limiting children’s ability to purchase or download apps while a challenge to it plays out in court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a one-sentence order Monday.

The Texas App Store Accountability Act, which requires app stores and developers to verify users’ ages and to obtain parental consent prior to making app store purchases, was reinstated by an appeals court last month after being temporarily paused by a Texas-based federal judge in December.

Youth advocacy organization Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group whose members include Apple, Google and Meta, contend the law restricts children’s ability to access tools that enable them to participate in free speech.

They asked the Supreme Court last month for an emergency ruling blocking the law while litigation continues in lower courts.

Monday’s decision comes after a bipartisan group of 27 state attorneys general, led by Florida’s James Uthmeier, filed an amicus brief in support of the Texas law.

In response to the ruling, CCIA President Matt Schruers said his organization is looking forward “to an expedited hearing before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in early August to demonstrate how Texas’ App Store Accountability Act violates the First Amendment.”

SEAT, CCIA and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office has been defending the law, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Supreme Court last year upheld a different Texas age verification law that applies to pornographic websites.