Supreme Court Allows Texas To Require Age Verification For Mobile Apps
7 120The Supreme Court allowed Texas to enforce a law requiring app stores to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent before minors can download apps. Tech industry groups argue the law broadly restricts young people's access to digital speech, but the court let a 5th Circuit order stand without explanation or noted dissents. CNN notes that the Supreme Court's decision "doesn't resolve the case but rather will allow Texas to enforce the law while the litigation continues to play out." From the report: "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."
[...] 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.
7 comments
Re:Parent's phone gets dialog to approve .... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @08:09PM (#66225936)
Sounds like you agree it's a decision for the parents. Why is the government getting involved then?
Re:Parent's phone gets dialog to approve .... (Score: 5, Informative)
by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @08:19PM (#66225952)
It's interstate commerce. This should be a federal not state thing, but then again, you Klanturds hate the Constitution as you've proven over and over again...
Re:Parent's phone gets dialog to approve .... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @08:23PM (#66225962)
Where is the great injustice here?
None of your examples involved age checking adults to make sure they're not kids. That's precisely the problem.
Re:Parent's phone gets dialog to approve .... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by billyswong ( 1858858 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @10:57PM (#66226128)
Want to buy alcohol, adults can be ID checked. So having an adult document that they are an adult is not an unheard of thing.
When you buy alcohol in a shop, the cashier ID check won't form a centralized purchase record database for hackers to exploit. Online age check as of today all eagerly create such database, with your ID tied to all major social platform online speech.
Dude you've got Google right there (Score: 5, Interesting)
by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @07:26PM (#66225866)
There are lots and lots and lots of studies about this.
But what the hell here's one, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
Basically right wing thinking is a neurological problem. The study says conservative thinking but if you actually read the study the thought patterns they're talking about aren't conservative they are right wing, but the right wing has long since branded the word conservative to mean right wing so the study uses the word like that...
So basically about 30% of the human race is prone to right-wing thinking. This would explain how monarchs stayed in power for so long. An overactive fear impulse causes people to seek out safety in extreme ways. In this case they give all the money and power to a tiny handful of individuals expecting the those powerful people to protect them.
There is a real issue there (Score: 5, Insightful)
by taustin ( 171655 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @06:17PM (#66225786)
"A minor child who downloads a software application from an app store agrees to contractual terms of service, "
Which a minor cannot, legally, do. Without the parent agreeing to the terms, there's no enforceable contract.
The counterpoint is, of course, the impossibility of verifying anyone's age online without pissing off a lot of people who really shouldn't be on the internet to begin with.
No good answers, or even good questions.
Wrong argument (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Rashkae ( 59673 ) on Monday July 06, 2026 @11:04PM (#66226136)
It was entirely the wrong argument. The question is not whether youth are barred from accessing content, (without parental supervision.). The question is that all adults are barred from accessing content without providing papers to untrusted entities.