Computer & Communications Industry Association v. Paxton
Issue
Whether Texas S.B. 2420 (the App Store Accountability Act), which voids contracts between app developers and minors unless parental consent is obtained and mandates parental disclosure of data collection practices, violates the First Amendment as applied to app store owners and developers.
What Happened
Plaintiff Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking to block enforcement of Texas S.B. 2420, codified at Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 121.022–056, on First Amendment grounds. The Digital Childhood Alliance filed this amicus brief in support of Defendant Attorney General Paxton's opposition to that motion. The amicus argues that S.B. 2420 regulates commercial contract formation with minors—not expressive speech—and is therefore content-neutral conduct regulation to which the First Amendment does not apply; it further contends that the statute applies to all apps uniformly specifically because the tech industry previously challenged Ohio's narrower, content-targeted parental notification law as impermissibly content-based under *NetChoice v. Yost*, 716 F. Supp. 3d 539 (S.D. Ohio 2024). The brief draws on Senate Judiciary subcommittee testimony regarding a minor harmed by a Character.AI chatbot whose family's litigation was obstructed by arbitration clauses and damages caps the minor had accepted without parental knowledge.
Why It Matters
This brief illustrates how states are attempting to circumvent First Amendment platform-autonomy challenges by framing minor-protective legislation as commercial contract regulation rather than speech regulation, a theory that—if accepted—could substantially limit the reach of *Moody v. NetChoice* in the context of app store transactions and AI product liability for minors.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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