• by Wendy Davis , 9 hours ago

A Texas law requiring app distributors like Google and Apple to verify users' ages and block minors under 18 from downloading apps without parental consent is unconstitutional, the tech organization Computer & Communications Industry Association and a group of students argue in separate lawsuits filed Thursday.

The App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420), passed earlier this year, will take effect January 1, unless blocked in court.

Utah also recently passed a law similar to the one in Texas. On the federal level, U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Representative John James (R-Michigan) introduced a nationwide version of the measure.

The Texas law "violates the First Amendment on its face," the advocacy organization Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and two individual high school students argue in a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Austin.

"Just as the government could not compel a bookstore to screen patrons and stop minors from purchasing any book without parental approval, the state cannot ban minors from downloading digital content though app stores or within apps without parental consent," they add.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association makes a similar argument.

"None of our laws require businesses to 'card' people before they can enter bookstores and shopping malls. The First Amendment prohibits such oppressive laws as much in cyberspace as it does in the physical world," the organization says in its complaint, also filed in Austin.

The tech association adds that the law affects app developers as well as teens.

"For example, a 14-year-old cannot purchase the audiobook version of To Kill a Mockingbird from Audible until her parent or guardian approves the purchase," the group says in its complaint. "If her parent or guardian is too busy or refuses to approve the request, or cannot adequately prove legal authority, the minor would be blocked entirely from listening to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel."

Both lawsuits call attention to the Supreme Court's 2011 decision striking down a California law that would have banned the sale of violent video games to minors, without parental consent.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who authored the opinion in that case, wrote that the government doesn't have a “free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed. He added that basic free speech principles “do not vary when a new and different medium for communication appears.”

Texas previously passed a separate statute, Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (HB 18), that would have restricted teens' ability to access social media.

That statute would have required social platforms to ask users their ages, and then deploy filtering technology to block "harmful" content to minors. The statute defines harmful content as including material that “promotes,” “glorifies,” or “facilitates” eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse, and “grooming ... or other sexual exploitation or abuse.”

Another provision would have prohibited targeted advertising to minors, without parental consent.

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and tech industry groups challenged that measure, and U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman in Austin blocked enforcement of key provisions.

Texas appealed Pitman's order to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear arguments on November 3 in New Orleans.