The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Texas student advocacy group’s request to block enforcement of a state law requiring app store users to verify their ages and obtain parental permission on Monday.
Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, co-founded by incoming UT law student Cameron Samuels, filed a June 10 emergency application for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas v. Paxton, which challenges Texas Senate Bill 2420, or the Texas App Store Accountability Act. Samuels said the emergency application asks the justices to temporarily stop the state from enforcing the law while the case proceeds through the Texas courts and appeals are argued. The Supreme Court’s decision is not intended to weigh in on the law’s constitutionality.
A district judge blocked the law in December 2025, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals deemed it enforceable in late May, with the bill currently in effect. The student group asked the Supreme Court to restore the district judge’s orders but was ultimately rejected, based on Attorney General Ken Paxton’s argument that the bill is not a violation of the First Amendment.
The students’ focus was on the law’s reach. Ambika Kumar, a partner at law firm Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle and counsel of record for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, said the Supreme Court upheld a narrower law allowing age verification for pornography sites in Texas last year, but that this law is much more restrictive.
“You can’t download the New York Times app without getting your parents’ permission,” Kumar said. “So it’s much broader.”
Samuels said the sudden enforcement of the law is already affecting high schoolers in their organization. They said engagement on the organization’s communication app, Slack, has dropped.
“A ban on apps without age verification is a ban because it creates concrete barriers,” Samuels said. “We can’t rely on these hypothetical alternative solutions that might not even exist now or in the future.”
Paxton’s filing argued the law furthers the state’s interest in empowering parents and countered that the bill is about commercial speech, not expression. Paxton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Samuels said that if the bill is officially deemed lawful, life for young people in Texas will look different, as those who may be legally old enough to drive would face restrictions on what mobile apps they could download.
“Whether it’s educational, it’s entertainment, or utility,” Samuels said. “Students driving at 15-16 years old, meeting up with friends for lunch at Whataburger, and they can’t check their mobile app because they don’t have parental permission, or they have to verify their age to do so. How can they drive and do things on their own like that, but not be able to access an app?”