- Texas App Store Liability Enforcement Hit by Two Lawsuits
- The whistleblowers argue that the law violates the First Amendment
- Texas age verification law to go into effect January 1, 2026
A journalism student, a high school debater, a student advocacy organization, and a consortium of big tech giants walk into a room. No, it’s not the start of a joke: everyone is trying to stop Texas’ new age verification law from going into effect.
The Texas App Store Accountability Act, which goes into effect on January 1, 2026, will require official app stores to conduct mandatory age checks on anyone in the state before allowing them to download any mobile app.
Teenagers would also be prohibited from downloading any app or make an in-app purchase without parental consent. In turn, parents must verify their identity to give consent for each download or purchase.
According to the CCIA (Computer and Communications Industry Association), these requirements violate the First Amendment “by preventing app stores from offering legal content, preventing users from viewing that content, and forcing app developers to discuss their offerings in a way that pleases the state.”
Students Engaged for the Advancement of Texas (SEAT) agrees with Big Tech on this and filed a similar lawsuit. “Students have the same right to access information as adults, and this law denies them that,” said Cameron Samuels, co-founder and CEO of SEAT.
The Texas legislation is one of many age verification laws being enforced across the United States in the name of children’s online safety. While mandatory age controls have led internet users to turn to the best VPN apps to avoid sharing their sensitive data, it’s still unclear whether using a VPN could be a viable option for Texans.
Texas Age Verification Rules: “A Broad Censorship Regime”
The CCIA, which represents companies including Apple, Google and Amazon, has called the proposed rules a “misguided attempt to protect minors” that seeks to go a step further than current parental control systems by requiring everyone (not just minors) to prove their age before they can do anything in app stores.
Users can do so by uploading a valid form of government-issued identification to the platform. However, experts warn that creating such a database with sensitive details raises concerns about data privacy and security as it may become a target for hacking or abuse.
But that’s not all. “The Texas App Store Accountability Act imposes a broad censorship regime on the entire universe of mobile applications,” the CCIA warns in its complaint.
That’s because the law goes far beyond social media apps or adult-only websites, which are the target of most age verification laws in the United States. It will age-control all types of apps, including educational, news and creative apps like Wikipedia, Coursera, Spotify and The New York Times, which could hinder minors’ ability to learn, communicate and express themselves.
However, “the First Amendment does not allow the government to require teenagers to obtain parental permission before accessing information, except in discrete categories such as obscenity. The Constitution also prohibits restricting adults’ access to expression in the name of protecting children,” said Ambika Kumar, a lawyer for the student organization SEAT.
“This law imposes a system of prior restriction on protected expression that is allegedly unconstitutional,” he added.
Can a VPN help?
As mandatory age verification spreads across the Internet, people in the US and abroad are using VPN apps to bypass these checks.
Whether they do it to protect their most sensitive personal data or if they are minors seeking to evade control, it is difficult to know for sure; most likely a combination of both.
What’s important to know here is that a virtual private network (VPN) can spoof a user’s IP address to make it look like they’re browsing the Internet from a completely different location in no time.
As we’ve seen during the brief TikTok ban in the US, a VPN may not be a quick fix when restrictions are imposed at the App Store level. This will depend on how the restrictions will eventually be implemented.
At that point, however, there also remains the question of whether the complaints will succeed in overturning Texas’ new age verification requirements before they officially take effect.
