A federal judge has blocked a Texas law requiring age verification for app downloads just days before it was to take effect.
The ruling halted the App Store Accountability Act, which would have mandated parental consent for minors and age verification for all users starting January 1.
The decision marks another setback for Texas lawmakers attempting to regulate children’s online access.
Tech giants, including Google and Apple, had challenged the law as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.
The law would have required anyone under 18 to obtain parental permission before downloading any app. Adults would have needed to verify their age through app stores for every download.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled the broad mandate likely violates the First Amendment. The court compared the requirement to forcing bookstores to check IDs before selling books.
Constitutional lawyer David Coale explained the judge’s reasoning.
“And the court was troubled by the breadth of it, that to download a weather app you were gonna have to put it in your ID. He said that’s just too much. If you can tailor it some more, maybe you get back under the precedent the Supreme Court created about the adult speech, adult entertainment sites. But otherwise, it’s just gotta be narrower,” he said, according to Fox 4 KDFW.
The ruling distinguished this case from Texas’s age verification requirements for adult websites. The judge found that the app store law swept too broadly, applying to all digital content.
State Rep. Jared Patterson, who co-authored the House version, defended the legislation.
“Federal judges often get it wrong, and this is one of those cases. I look forward to the legal process working its way through to a final conclusion,” he said in a statement, per Fox 4.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already filed an appeal. The case now moves to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Coale predicted the appeals court won’t hear arguments for several months. Until then, Texas app users can continue downloading without age checks or parental approval.
