Supreme Court allows Texas to require age verification for mobile apps

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Texas to enforce a law that requires mobile app stores to verify the age of users and obtain parental consent for minors attempting to install programs on their phones.

Texas’ law, enacted last year in response to concerns about the online safety of minors, was opposed by the computer industry and a group of students who argued that it violated the First Amendment. Other states have considered similar laws amid a push to tighten online regulations for young people.

The Supreme Court sided with Texas in the emergency appeal without explanation. There were no noted dissents.

“A minor child who downloads a software application from an app store agrees to contractual terms of service, including whether the child’s location will be tracked, whether the child’s privacy will be protected, whether information from the child’s phone can be sold by the developer, and whether the child waives the right to sue,” Texas told the Supreme Court in urging the court to allow its law to take effect.

But the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group whose members include Apple and Google, said the law would effectively bar young people from accessing a wide range of content, “be it a book by Ernest Hemingway or J.K. Rowling, a Taylor Swift album, or a subscription to National Geographic.”

Allowing the law to take effect, the group said, would have “profound consequences for the protection of digital speech.”

The Supreme Court’s emergency docket decision doesn’t resolve the case but rather will allow Texas to enforce the law while the litigation continues to play out.

The Supreme Court last summer allowed Mississippi to enforce a law that required the nation’s largest social media companies to verify the age of their users and obtain parental consent for minors. The court did not explain its reasoning in that case either, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the court’s conservative wing, wrote a brief concurrence asserting that the Mississippi law is “likely unconstitutional” but said that the internet companies who sued had not “sufficiently demonstrated” that they would be harmed by a temporary order in favor of the state.

Texas’ law was broader, sweeping in every app available.

Last year, the Supreme Court upheld a different Texas law that requires age verification for pornographic websites. The adult entertainment industry had challenged the Texas law as violating the First Amendment because it restricted the ability of adults to access protected online speech.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a 6-3 court divided along ideological lines, with the court’s three liberals dissenting.

In the new case, involving Texas’ age verification for apps, a federal district court blocked the law’s enforcement in December — days before it was set to take effect. But a three-judge panel of the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals put that decision on hold in early June, allowing the state to enforce it.

By declining to take up the emergency appeal from the computer and student groups, the Supreme Court has left the 5th Circuit’s decision in place.

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