Computer & Comm v. Ken Paxton
Issue
In *Computer & Communications Industry Association v. Paxton*, the American Center for Law & Justice argues that Texas SB 2420—which requires age verification and parental consent before minors may download apps—regulates commercial contracting capacity rather than protected speech, and therefore falls outside First Amendment scrutiny entirely. The question is whether a state can reframe access to a general-purpose digital distribution platform as a minor-disaffirmance transaction, simultaneously avoiding strict scrutiny under the First Amendment and preemption under § 230, while affirmatively grounding the law in Fourteenth Amendment parental liberty rights.
What Happened
The ACLJ filed this amicus curiae brief at the Fifth Circuit in support of Defendant–Appellant Ken Paxton, urging reversal of the Western District of Texas decision that struck down SB 2420. The brief advances three coordinated theories: that app downloads are commercial license agreements governed by Texas's minor-disaffirmance doctrine rather than protected expressive transactions; that SB 2420 implements rather than displaces parental authority under the *Meyer–Pierce–Yoder–Troxel* line of cases; and that *Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton* (2025), which upheld age verification for pornographic websites, normalizes online age verification as a constitutionally permissible burden. The brief reads *Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n* as a parental-autonomy decision rather than a protected-speech-category decision, an interpretation that would substantially narrow that precedent's protective reach for minors seeking access to expressive digital content. The ACLJ asks the Fifth Circuit to uphold SB 2420 in full.
Why It Matters
If the Fifth Circuit credits the contract-not-speech framing, states would gain a widely replicable template for imposing age-verification and parental-consent regimes on digital platforms without triggering either First Amendment strict scrutiny or § 230 preemption—a structural gap with significant national implications for online speech. The brief's aggressive extension of *Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton* beyond obscenity-adjacent adult content to general-purpose app stores—which carry news, political commentary, and creative works fully protected for minors and adults alike—presents a limiting-principle question the Fifth Circuit will need to address directly. The recharacterization of *Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n* is the doctrinal move most worth watching: if adopted, it would hollow out one of the Supreme Court's clearest statements that minors retain First Amendment rights in the digital context.
Related Filings
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