blocked<\/a> 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\u2019s orders but was ultimately rejected, based on Attorney General Ken Paxton\u2019s argument that the bill is not a violation of the First Amendment.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe students\u2019 focus was on the law\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t download the New York Times app without getting your parents\u2019 permission,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cSo it\u2019s much broader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samuels said the sudden enforcement of the law is already affecting high schoolers in their organization. They said engagement on the organization\u2019s communication app, Slack, has dropped.<\/p>\n
\u201cA ban on apps without age verification is a ban because it creates concrete barriers,\u201d Samuels said. \u201cWe can\u2019t rely on these hypothetical alternative solutions that might not even exist now or in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s filing argued the law furthers the state\u2019s interest in empowering parents and countered that the bill is about commercial speech, not expression. Paxton\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s educational, it\u2019s entertainment, or utility,\u201d Samuels said. \u201cStudents driving at 15-16 years old, meeting up with friends for lunch at Whataburger, and they can\u2019t check their mobile app because they don\u2019t 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?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Texas student advocacy group\u2019s request to block enforcement of a state law…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-363669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}