"The First Amendment does not permit the government to require teenagers to get their parents' permission before accessing information, except in discrete categories like obscenity,"
"The Constitution also forbids restricting adults' access to speech in the name of protecting children. This law imposes a system of prior restraint on protected expression that is presumptively unconstitutional."
"extends far beyond social media to mainstream educational, news, and creative applications, including Wikipedia, search apps, and internet browsers; messaging services like WhatsApp and Slack; content libraries like Audible, Kindle, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube; educational platforms like Coursera, Codecademy, and Duolingo; news apps from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and The Atlantic; and publishing tools like Substack, Medium, and CapCut."
"does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."
Texas enacted an App Store Accountability Act similar to laws in Utah and Louisiana, with Texas' measure set to take effect January 1, 2026. A student advocacy group and two Texas minors filed a lawsuit challenging the law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that teenagers cannot be required to obtain parental permission to access information except in narrow categories and that adults' access cannot be restricted to protect children. Legal filings say the law covers a broad array of mainstream apps and services. Both suits cite Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association to argue states lack a broad power to limit minors' exposure to ideas.
Read at Ars Technica
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