Welp.
The Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for Texas to enforce a new state law that requires Apple and Google to verify the age of app store users as part of an effort to give parents more control over the content their children download.
The court’s brief order came in response to an emergency request from the tech companies and a group of students, who had told the justices that the law violated their free speech rights and asked that it be blocked.
The order is a temporary place holder that sets the rules while litigation continues in the lower courts over the constitutionality of the Texas law. The justices did not include their reasons, which is typical when they issue emergency orders, and there were no noted dissents.
Texas is one of 20 states that have passed or considered similar age-verification laws for electronic devices, placing new burdens on tech giants to restrict children’s access to apps amid a rising backlash against social media and its impact on young people.
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The Texas requirement was challenged by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group whose members include Google and Apple, as well as Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, which advocates for student involvement in education-related policymaking.
They argue that the law unconstitutionally “deputizes app stores to police both minors’ and adults’ threshold access to vast amounts of online speech.”
The companies said in a court filing that they already provided parental controls that allow parents to lock their children’s screens for bedtime, block unwanted apps, filter content by age and set up an approval process for purchases and downloads.
In response to the court’s order on Monday, Matt Schruers, the C.C.I.A. president, said in a statement that the organization would continue to press its case in the lower courts, where “we will demonstrate how the Texas App Store Accountability Act violates the First Amendment.”
“Accessing the internet should not require surrendering personal data, just as entering a bookstore should not require showing government identification,” he wrote.
See here for the previous update. I said at the time that the plaintiffs petitioned SCOTUS for relief that we’d probably get a quick ruling, and indeed we did, in about three weeks’ time. Not much to add now, the lawsuit will presumably proceed on the merits case, and in a few years we’ll be done. SCOTUSBlog and the Current have more.