The Supreme Court may be formally out of session for the year, but the justices remain busy with additional cases that continue to make their way to the docket.
And Monday was no different.
A majority of justices allowed Texas to continue enforcing, for now, a law requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before minors can download apps or make in-app purchases.
In two brief, unsigned orders, the justices declined to reinstate injunctions issued by a federal judge in Austin that had blocked the law from taking effect. No justice publicly dissented from the Court’s decision.
The dispute centers on the Texas App Store Accountability Act, also known as Senate Bill 2420. The law has been challenged by two separate groups, SCOTUSBlog reported.
One lawsuit was filed by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, an organization that says its members use mobile applications to educate young people about public policy and civic engagement.
The second was brought by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade organization representing app stores and app developers.
Among other claims, both lawsuits argue that the law violates the First Amendment, the blog noted.
In December, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked enforcement of the law.
Last month, however, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed those injunctions, allowing the statute to take effect while the litigation continues.
The challengers then asked the Supreme Court to restore the lower court’s orders, but the justices declined to do so, SCOTUSBlog noted further.
In their filing asking the Supreme Court to reinstate Pitman’s orders, the students argued that the 5th Circuit’s decision “would render virtually the entire internet—not to mention the distribution of every book, newspaper, magazine, movie, or record album—‘commercial speech’ the government could more readily ban, restrict, edit, or compel. That is clearly wrong.”
The plaintiffs argued further that Texas already blocks children from accessing adult content on the internet in a separate law that the nation’s highest court upheld last year.
As such, the students argued, SB 2420’s stated goal of protecting them “from ‘accessing harmful or inappropriate content’ … is not a valid government interest.”
In a brief of its own, the CCIA argued that the 5th Circuit’s decision “has upset the status quo by allowing the Act to be enforced for the first time, exposing app stores and millions of app developers to potential liability”
The ruling subjected app stores and developers to “enormous and unrecoverable compliance costs.”
The group added that, in any event, the app stores that the CCIA’s members currently operate already “provide various, voluntary tools that enable parents to control their children’s exposure to apps and content.”
Texas argued that Senate Bill 2420 regulates commercial transactions rather than protected speech.
Specifically, the state contended that the law governs the circumstances under which minors may agree to the contractual terms and conditions required to download applications from an app store.
“In the same way that the State can deny drivers’ licenses to children under sixteen,” Texas argued, “even though some fourteen-year-olds may wish to drive to a bookstore and purchase a book, the State can restrict children’s downloads of software applications to mobile devices as a product category, even if some children may wish to use applications to engage in expressive conduct.”
Texas also argued that because Senate Bill 2420 applies to all applications regardless of their content, the federal district court relied on the wrong constitutional standard in concluding that the law likely violates the First Amendment.
According to the state, the court should have applied a less demanding standard of review—known as intermediate scrutiny—rather than the more rigorous level of constitutional scrutiny used in the ruling.
The Texas law can pass that test, the state argued, noting that, as the appeals court held: “‘Requiring age verification, parental consent, and app-related content ratings likely directly and materially advances Texas’s substantial interest in protecting children’s data, safety, and privacy in a digital world.’”
