Judge Blocks Texas App Store Age Law, Apple Wins Privacy Fight

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman granted a preliminary injunction against the Texas App Store Accountability Act, known as SB2420, finding the law is likely unconstitutional under the First Amendment and comparing it to a rule that would require every bookstore to check customers’ ages at the door and seek parental approval for minors before they could browse or buy. The order bars Texas from enforcing the statute while a constitutional challenge brought by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), whose members include Apple and Google, moves forward.

SB2420 would require app stores and mobile developers to verify the age of every Texas user at account creation and classify them into age bands, then secure verifiable parental consent before allowing minors to download apps or make in‑app purchases and maintain records of those steps. Apple had already begun preparing technical support for the regime, including new APIs in iOS 26.2 to pass age‑range information to developers and tools to let parents approve or revoke a child’s access and receive notices of significant app changes.

The injunction follows an October lawsuit in which CCIA argued that SB2420 imposes sweeping age‑verification, parental consent and compelled‑speech obligations on both app stores and developers, burdening access to lawful content and chilling online speech. In his ruling, Pitman said the statute must survive strict scrutiny as a speech regulation and concluded that Texas had not shown a tight fit between its stated goal of protecting children and the law’s broad requirements, noting it would likely fail even intermediate scrutiny.

Apple, which has opposed similar “age assurance” mandates in other states and in Congress, has framed SB2420 as a privacy threat because it would require collection of sensitive personal data from anyone who wants to download even basic apps, such as weather or sports. “While we share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app,” the company has said of the law.developer.

For users in Texas, the ruling means new Apple accounts will not, for now, be bound by SB2420’s mandate that anyone under 18 join a Family Sharing group and obtain adult approval for each app download and in‑app transaction. Developers targeting the Texas market also gain breathing room, as they no longer face an imminent obligation to integrate age‑status signals from app stores, build parental notification systems and manage Texas‑specific consent workflows tied to potential civil penalties under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices‑Consumer Protection Act.

The state can still appeal Pitman’s injunction to the Fifth Circuit, which has previously been receptive to Texas’ attempts to regulate online platforms. Even if SB2420 remains frozen, Apple and other platforms must navigate a patchwork of pending and enacted child‑safety and age‑verification laws in Utah, Louisiana and at the federal level, as U.S. lawmakers test how far they can push regulation of app distribution without running afoul of constitutional speech protections.