Spectators take photos with their smartphones during a World Cup match at the Houston Stadium in Houston on June 23. The Supreme Court is allowing Texas to enforce a law that limits minors’ access to app stores on mobile devices while lawsuits continue in the lower courts.
Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
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Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed a Texas law prohibiting minors from downloading apps without their parent’s consent to go into effect.
Multiple organizations had sued the state, arguing that the law violates children’s freedom of speech. But in an unsigned, unexplained order, the high court allowed Texas to enforce the law as lawsuits continue in lower courts.
Texas enacted its App Store Accountability Act in 2025. The law requires app stores to verify all users’ ages, and it prevents children under age 18 from downloading most apps without parental consent. Texas told a lower court that legislators enacted the law in order to keep minors from seeing “harmful” material.
Challengers argued that such a broad law is plainly unconstitutional under a variety of Supreme Court precedents, holding that children do have substantial free speech rights.
Texas responded in its filings that the law regulates only “commercial speech” and so is less constitutionally protected. Nonetheless, the law has only a few exceptions for apps made by emergency services and the companies that oversee college entrance exams. Children must get parental approval before downloading all other apps, such as Instagram, library apps, and the apps of news organizations.
A lower court initially blocked the law from going into effect, writing that the law “prohibits minors from participating in the democratic exchange of views online.” But in June, a panel of judges on the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law. On Monday, the Supreme Court left the law in place, at least for now. The law now returns to the lower courts for further litigation
Utah, Louisiana, and Alabama have passed similar laws.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a law banning children from accessing content online. Last year, the court upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages. But the court has long treated children’s access to pornography differently than other access questions.
Monday’s app store ruling does not necessarily mean that the law is constitutional — only that the law can be enforced while lawsuits make their way through the lower courts. That said, the court’s refusal to intervene at this point is at least a tentative signal that favors the law.
This story originally appeared on NPR
