Students v. Paxton
Issue
In *Students v. Paxton*, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argues that two federal preliminary injunctions blocking SB2420 — a state law requiring app stores to obtain parental consent before allowing minors to download apps — should be stayed pending appeal. The core legal question is whether SB2420 regulates a commercial transaction rather than speech itself, which determines whether the law faces the demanding strict-scrutiny standard that has defeated most internet-content regulations or the more permissive intermediate scrutiny applied to commercial speech. The answer is non-obvious because app-store listings involve both expressive content and economic exchange, and no circuit has squarely resolved which framework governs.
What Happened
This is a reply brief filed by Appellant Ken Paxton in the consolidated Fifth Circuit cases 25-51073 and 26-50001, responding to opposition briefs filed by student and industry plaintiffs who successfully obtained preliminary injunctions in the Western District of Texas blocking enforcement of SB2420. Paxton argues that enjoining a duly enacted state statute constitutes per se irreparable harm to the State and that the balance of equities favors a stay. On the merits, he contends SB2420 is content-neutral because it targets the commercial and contractual nature of app downloads rather than any subject matter or viewpoint, placing the law under *Central Hudson*'s intermediate-scrutiny framework rather than the strict scrutiny applied in *Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n*. He further argues that any content-based statutory exemptions — such as carve-outs for emergency services and standardized-testing apps — are severable under *Barr v. AAPCI* and do not doom the statute as a whole. Finally, Paxton invokes the Supreme Court's recent decision in *Trump v. CASA* to argue that even if a stay is denied on the merits, the injunctions must be narrowed because district courts lack equitable authority to block enforcement against parties beyond those before the court.
Why It Matters
Texas is attempting to require app stores to obtain parental consent before minors can download apps, and this reply represents the State's bid to lift federal court blocks on that law before a full constitutional ruling. The most consequential argument is the commercial-speech reframe: if the Fifth Circuit provisionally accepts that app-store listings universally propose a commercial transaction — removing the case from *Brown*'s protective framework — it would signal that intermediate scrutiny, not strict scrutiny, governs an entire category of app-economy regulation, accelerating similar legislation in other states and potentially producing a circuit split. The *Trump v. CASA* injunction-scope argument is the most immediately actionable piece of the brief, as any Fifth Circuit language limiting the geographic or party reach of district court injunctions in this context will be closely watched across dozens of pending digital-regulation cases.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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