Supreme Court Declines to Block Texas App Store Age-Verification Law, Leaving SB 2420 in Effect

Overview

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday, July 6, 2026, to block Texas from enforcing its app store age-verification law, denying emergency applications filed by the tech industry and a group of Texas students, according to SCOTUSblog. The justices issued unsigned orders in both cases, and no public dissents were recorded, SCOTUSblog reported. The Texas Tribune reported that the high court declined Monday without comment.

The decision is the latest turn in a fight The Machine Herald has previously reported, when the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the student group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) asked the Court to vacate a Fifth Circuit stay that had let Texas’s Senate Bill 2420 take effect.

What We Know

The two emergency applications, docketed as Students Engaged in Advancing Texas v. Paxton, No. 25A1389, and Computer & Communications Industry Association v. Paxton, No. 25A1390, were both denied, according to SCOTUSblog. The ruling leaves in place a Fifth Circuit order that had stayed a preliminary injunction against SB 2420, meaning the law — which requires app marketplace operators to verify users’ ages and app developers to obtain parental consent before minors download apps or make in-app purchases — remains enforceable while the underlying constitutional challenge continues, The Texas Tribune and WBRC reported.

In its own account of the ruling, CCIA said the law “requires people to show government ID or other proof of age before downloading apps and requires parental consent for minors to download apps and app content.” CCIA President and CEO Matt Schruers said in the statement: “We look forward to an expedited hearing before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in early August to demonstrate how Texas’ App Store Accountability Act violates the First Amendment. People should not have to turn over personal data to access the internet any more than they should show government identification to enter a bookstore.” The Texas Tribune likewise reported that CCIA looks forward to making its case at an expedited hearing before the Fifth Circuit in early August.

In briefing before the ruling, Texas Solicitor General William Peterson argued that “the modern digital world is different” from the physical world, contending children could access “any conceivable content” online without parental knowledge, according to Al Jazeera. The same report noted that CCIA and SEAT had countered that the law would treat “virtually the entire internet” as “commercial speech the government could more readily ban.”

The Fifth Circuit, whose stay the Supreme Court left intact, had found that the law’s requirements “likely directly and materially advances Texas’s substantial interest in protecting children’s data,” SCOTUSblog reported.

Beyond Texas

The ruling is already shaping litigation strategy in other states. WBRC reported that Alabama, which passed its own app store age-verification measure, House Bill 161, with unanimous bipartisan support in the 2026 legislative session and is set to enforce it starting January 1, 2027, joined 27 other states in an amicus brief backing Texas’s law. Katherine Robertson, chief counsel to Alabama’s Attorney General’s Office, told WBRC: “We felt like it was important to come to their defense because we knew it would have implications for our own law’s standing.” Robertson added that Alabama views the underlying conduct as “more commercial speech” than traditional protected speech, and said, “If we’re coming behind them, we want to make sure our law doesn’t suffer from any deficiencies that came out in litigation from other states.”

Al Jazeera noted that the Supreme Court upheld a separate Texas age-verification law targeting pornographic websites in a 6-3 decision in 2025, a precedent both sides have invoked in the SB 2420 litigation.

What We Don’t Know

The Supreme Court’s orders did not address whether SB 2420 is constitutional, and the underlying First Amendment challenge continues at the Fifth Circuit, which CCIA said has scheduled an expedited hearing for early August. It remains unclear how the Fifth Circuit will rule on the merits, or whether either side will seek Supreme Court review again once that ruling is issued. It is also not yet clear how the outcome will affect Alabama’s HB 161 or other states’ similar measures once they take effect.