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Last week, the Supreme Court a request to reinstate a federal injunction preventing the Texas App Store Accountability Act from going into effect while constitutionality challenges make their way through the courts. The Texas law (SB 2420) requires app stores to verify the ages of every user, obtain parental consent for downloads and purchases for every minor user, and share age-related data of users with every app. As the Fifth Circuit reviews the case, the Open Technology Institute (OTI), alongside the Internet Society (ISOC), and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), filed a joint amicus brief on June 24, 2026 supporting Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) and the Computer & Communication Industry Association (CCIA) in their challenge to Texas’s App Store Accountability Act. 

In CCIA v. Paxton, a federal court the Texas law on First Amendment grounds in December 2025 precisely because “the categories of speech it restricts are so exceedingly overbroad.” Judge Pitman’s explained that requiring users to verify their age to download general-interest apps is “akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door.” In May, the Fifth Circuit pending an appeal arguing that the law should be subject to intermediate, not strict, scrutiny. CCIA then petitioned the Supreme Court to reinstate the injunction, which the Court denied last Monday without comment. 

The case is still being considered by the Fifth Circuit. On June 24, 2026, OTI jointly filed an amicus brief with ISOC and CDT that detailed how the law unreasonably burdens all Internet users in Texas by mandating age verification requirements for large swaths of content — failing strict and intermediate security, while also endangering online privacy and security. 

App-store age verification restricts online spaces for all users—minors and adults—regardless of whether or not they are seeking age-restricted content. As a result, the Texas law will likely chill speech and prevent users, especially people without accepted forms of identification, from accessing spaces and content that they could access offline. The brief points out that, rather than protecting children from online harm, age verification requirements actually subject all users to new risks:

“By requiring widespread collection, processing, and storage or personal age verification information, the law subjects all Texans to an increased risk of data and security breaches and imposes this cost when they seek to exercise their constitutional rights.”

In addition, the brief notes that there are less restrictive, more narrowly tailored and privacy-protective ways to advancing youth safety online, such as through default safety features and parental account tools, voluntary age signaling, and use of zero-knowledge proof systems for sharing age-related information. 

Related reading: 

• The App Store Accountability Act Poses Serious Concerns for Privacy, Security, and Free Expression (Mar. 5, 2026)
• SCOTUS’ Decision to Uphold the Texas Age Verification Law Jeopardizes Everyone’s Online Privacy and Security, Says OTI (June 30, 2025)
• Exploring Privacy-Preserving Age Verification: A Close Look at Zero-Knowledge Proofs (Jul 17, 2025)
• (Jan 15, 2025)
• Age Verification: The Complicated Effort to Protect Youth Online (Apr. 23, 2024)