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Texas lawmakers entered the 89th Legislative Session with a renewed focus on regulating how minors interact with digital platforms. Senate Bill 2420 (SB 2420), known as the App Store Accountability Act, authored by State Sen. Angela Paxton (R-McKinney), represented one of the most sweeping efforts yet, imposing statewide age verification and parental consent requirements on app stores and software application developers operating in Texas.
From the outset, the law raised serious constitutional and policy concerns. Texas Policy Research (TPR) warned that SB 2420 risked substituting state mandates for parental judgment, expanding government control over lawful speech, and regulating far more than genuinely harmful online content. Those concerns were outlined in our earlier analysis when the law first faced a federal First Amendment challenge, well before any court ruled on its legality.
That ruling has now arrived. On December 23, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking SB 2420 from taking effect, finding that the law likely violates the First Amendment and cannot survive constitutional scrutiny. The decision provides a clear explanation of why the App Store Accountability Act failed and sets important boundaries for future digital regulation efforts in Texas.
Court Ruling Key Takeaways on SB 2420 and the First Amendment
The court’s decision rests on several core constitutional findings, beginning with its conclusion that SB 2420 is a content-based regulation of speech. Because the law applies differently depending on the type of content an application provides, it triggers strict scrutiny, the highest level of judicial review.
The court rejected the state’s argument that SB 2420 merely regulates commercial activity. Instead, it emphasized that app stores function as gateways to protected expression, including news, education, entertainment, and political discourse. Conditioning access to those platforms on age verification and parental consent burdens speech itself, not just transactions.
Under strict scrutiny, Texas was required to demonstrate a compelling state interest and show that SB 2420 was narrowly tailored to achieve that interest using the least restrictive means. The court found that Texas failed to meet this burden. While protecting children from unlawful or obscene content is a legitimate goal, SB 2420 extended far beyond that scope, restricting access to virtually all mobile applications regardless of whether they posed any demonstrated harm.
The court also highlighted the law’s overbreadth and underinclusiveness. Minors could still access similar content through web browsers or preinstalled applications, undermining the law’s effectiveness, while lawful and beneficial apps were swept into the same regulatory net. This imbalance alone was sufficient to doom the statute under First Amendment analysis.
In addition, the court found key provisions unconstitutionally vague. SB 2420 required developers to assign age ratings and report significant changes without providing clear standards, inviting arbitrary enforcement and encouraging over-censorship. Because the statute’s components were interdependent, the court concluded that it could not be salvaged through severance and enjoined the law in its entirety.
Texas Policy Research Analysis of SB 2420 Confirmed by the Court
The court’s ruling closely aligns with the concerns TPR raised throughout the legislative process. TPR opposed SB 2420 not because child protection is unimportant, but because the bill adopted a top-down regulatory model that expanded government authority into private family decisions and lawful digital expression.
SB 2420 replaced parental discretion with a rigid, state-mandated consent system. Rather than empowering parents with tools or information, it forced families into a transactional approval process for every app download and in-app purchase. The court echoed this concern by recognizing that the law burdens lawful speech and substitutes blanket restrictions for individualized judgment.
From a free enterprise perspective, TPR warned that SB 2420 imposed compliance costs that large platforms could absorb but smaller developers and startups could not. The court’s discussion of chilling effects and deterrence reinforces this point. Faced with vague standards and potential liability, businesses would predictably restrict access, delay updates, or withdraw from the Texas market altogether.
Most importantly, TPR argued that SB 2420 misdiagnosed the problem. The bill targeted app stores broadly instead of addressing specific harmful content, predatory design practices, or unlawful activity. The court’s strict scrutiny analysis confirms that this misalignment between means and ends was constitutionally fatal.
Privacy Policy Context and Lessons From the App Privacy Index
The failure of SB 2420 did not occur in a vacuum. It emerged from a broader legislative push framed around digital privacy and child protection, even as evidence mounted that many online harms stem from deceptive design and excessive data collection by specific platforms rather than app stores as intermediaries.
Texas Policy Research previously examined this tension through the lens of the 2025 App Privacy Index, which highlighted how widespread data harvesting and manipulative design practices dominate the app economy. That analysis contrasted SB 2420 with the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, which focused on transparency, consumer rights, and limits on deceptive consent practices without restricting lawful speech.
This context helps explain why SB 2420 failed the court’s narrow tailoring test. Less restrictive alternatives already existed. Targeted privacy rules, clear disclosures, and limits on dark patterns address real harms without conditioning access to protected expression on government-mandated verification systems. The court’s ruling implicitly affirms that privacy policy can advance without sacrificing liberty when lawmakers choose restraint over control.
Implications for Future Texas Internet Regulation and Free Speech
The injunction against SB 2420 does not foreclose all state action in the digital space. The court carefully distinguished narrow regulations addressing unprotected speech from sweeping mandates that burden lawful expression.
For future legislation to survive constitutional scrutiny, it must focus on clearly defined harms, rely on evidence, and avoid blanket restrictions that treat all digital speech as suspect. Laws that empower parents through transparency and choice, rather than coercion, are far more likely to align with both constitutional limits and Texas values.
The ruling also serves as a warning against using privacy rhetoric to justify expansive regulatory schemes. When privacy becomes a pretext for control, courts will intervene. Texas lawmakers would be wise to heed that lesson before advancing similar proposals in future sessions.
Conclusion
The federal court’s decision blocking Senate Bill 2420 underscores the constitutional limits on state power in the digital age. While protecting children online is a shared and important goal, the App Store Accountability Act attempted to achieve that goal through overbroad, vague, and content-based restrictions that infringed on protected speech.
By applying strict scrutiny and examining the law’s real-world effects, the court reaffirmed that parental authority, market-based solutions, and targeted enforcement remain the appropriate path forward. SB 2420 stands as a reminder that liberty-oriented policy is not an obstacle to child protection, but a necessary foundation for it.
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