Last updated: 2026-10-02
On July 24, 2026, the Fifth Circuit decided Computer & Communications Industry Association v. Paxton, No. 24-50721, consolidated with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas v. Paxton, No. 25-50096. The Texas SCOPE Act (HB 18, the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act, in effect since September 1, 2024) sets duties for social media services toward users they know to be minors. The court affirmed the preliminary injunction against the Act's monitoring and filtering requirement, holding it preempted by Section 230. It vacated the injunction on the targeted ads, unlawful ads and age-verification requirements, including the ban on displaying targeted advertising to a known minor in Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 509.052(2)(D). The plaintiffs who challenged that ban lacked standing, so its constitutionality remains undecided. The vacatur takes effect when the mandate issues, and a judge withheld the mandate on September 14, 2026 pending Texas's petition for rehearing en banc.
What did the Fifth Circuit decide on the Texas SCOPE Act?
Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote for a panel with Judges Higginbotham and Ho. From the opinion:
We hold that the SEAT plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge the monitoring and filtering, targeted ads, and unlawful ads requirements, and that their challenge to the age-verification requirement is now foreclosed by precedent. The monitoring and filtering requirement challenged by the CCIA plaintiffs, however, is preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 ("CDA"), 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1). We therefore VACATE and REMAND in part, and AFFIRM in part.
The CCIA plaintiffs are two trade groups, CCIA and NetChoice, whose members, per the opinion, include Google, Meta and X. The SEAT plaintiffs are a student coalition, a 16-year-old, an Austin advertising agency (Ampersand Group) and a content creator.
On Section 230, the majority held that "Actions to enforce the monitoring and filtering requirement are claims stemming from DSPs' actions as publishers" and are preempted. It declined to reach the First Amendment questions.
The vote on the filtering duty was 2 to 1, with Judge Ho concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. Judge Ho reads the Act as regulating platforms' curation, which he calls their first-party speech and places outside Section 230: "So I would vacate the injunction in its entirety." On the SEAT injunction he wrote: "I concur in that partial vacatur."
Why was the targeted ads injunction vacated?
HB 18 regulates digital service providers; the SEAT plaintiffs are users, a content creator and an advertiser. The court required a clear showing that regulated platforms "will likely react in predictable ways" to the law in a way that puts the plaintiffs' own speech at substantial risk, found none, and held their alleged chill "too subjective to amount to an injury in fact."
For ad tech, the relevant passage is the court's reading of "targeted advertising", which HB 18 leaves undefined. In footnote 10 the court looked to the definition in the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act. Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 541.001(31) defines "targeted advertising" as "displaying to a consumer an advertisement that is selected based on personal data obtained from that consumer's activities over time and across nonaffiliated websites or online applications to predict the consumer's preferences or interests." The footnote ends: "Ampersand does not allege that it intends to engage in cross-platform, personal information-based targeted advertising of the kind the statute apparently contemplates as defined under Texas law." Ampersand places ads "on content or topics already frequented by teens", and the court wrote that the requirement's "statutory context weighs against" reading it to cover that. The reading appears in a standing footnote and uses the word "apparently"; the court made no merits ruling on the term.
The court remanded the SEAT case to the district court; footnote 19 states that "it is not clear that the SEAT plaintiffs' showing with respect to standing cannot be cured." The age-verification injunction was vacated because Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461 (2025), upheld a materially similar requirement (footnote 11).
Is the Texas SCOPE Act enjoined now?
Two district court orders blocked parts of HB 18: the CCIA order of August 30, 2024 enjoined only the monitoring and filtering requirement, and the SEAT order of February 7, 2025 (W.D. Tex. No. 1:24-cv-00945, Dkt. 42) enjoined four requirements, the targeted ads ban among them.
| HB 18 duty | Section | CCIA order, 2024-08-30 | SEAT order, 2025-02-07 | Fifth Circuit, 2026-07-24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monitor and filter content for known minors | §§ 509.053, 509.056(1) | Enjoined | Enjoined | CCIA injunction affirmed (Section 230); SEAT injunction vacated (standing) |
| No targeted advertising to a known minor | § 509.052(2)(D) | Not enjoined | Enjoined | Vacated (standing) |
| Prevent ads for products unlawful for minors | § 509.055 | Not enjoined | Enjoined | Vacated (standing) |
| Age verification where over one-third of content is harmful or obscene | § 509.057 | Not enjoined | Enjoined | Vacated (foreclosed by Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton) |
| Age registration before account creation | § 509.051 | Not enjoined | Denied | Not addressed |
Sources: the opinion, pages 3 to 9, 25 and 30; the SEAT order, pages 36 to 37 and footnote 18.
Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 41(c), "The mandate is effective when issued." Texas filed a petition for rehearing en banc on September 2, 2026, limited to No. 24-50721 and the Section 230 question; it calls the SEAT standing holding unanimous and correct. On September 14, 2026, a judge withheld the mandate, and CCIA and NetChoice filed their response on September 24, 2026. The CourtListener copy of the docket, which can lag PACER, shows no ruling on the petition as of October 2, 2026.
What does § 509.052 require of apps with known minors?
Section 509.052 applies to a digital service provider "that enters into an agreement with a known minor for access to a digital service," unless a verified parent provides otherwise. From the enrolled text, the provider:
may not: (A) allow the known minor to make purchases or engage in other financial transactions through the digital service; (B) share, disclose, or sell the known minor's personal identifying information; (C) use the digital service to collect the known minor's precise geolocation data; or (D) use the digital service to display targeted advertising to the known minor.
A "digital service" includes "an application" that collects or processes personal identifying information with Internet connectivity (§ 509.001(1)), and the duties apply to services that let users socially interact, create a profile and post content others can view (§ 509.002(a)). A user who registers an age under 18 "is considered to be a known minor" (§ 509.051(b)). The SEAT court denied the injunction motion as to the age-registration requirement, and the CCIA order enjoined only the monitoring and filtering requirement. Chapter 509 leaves "precise geolocation data" undefined; the definition in § 541.001, the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, uses a radius of 1,750 feet, and how a court would read the chapter 509 term is open.
The Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General enforces HB 18 as a deceptive trade practice, and a parent of a known minor affected by a violation may sue for a declaratory judgment or an injunction (§§ 509.151 to 509.152). The Attorney General's October 3, 2024 petition against TikTok (Galveston County, No. 24-CV-1763) alleges violations of § 509.052 by sharing, disclosing and selling known minors' personal identifying information, and alleges that TikTok's parental tools give parents no control over "Defendants' ability to display targeted advertising to a known minor." The press release states the State seeks "civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation." These are the State's allegations.
Texas's app store law, SB 2420, is in a separate Fifth Circuit appeal, covered in the post on app store age signal laws; the federal rule for children under 13 is in the post on the 2026 COPPA Rule compliance date.
What does an app's traffic show for a known minor's account?
An ad request can contain the identifiers and coordinates that bear on § 509.052(2)(C) and (D). In the IAB Tech Lab's OpenRTB 2.6 Device object, ifa is the "ID sanctioned for advertiser use in the clear", lmt is the "Limit Ad Tracking" signal, and the nested Geo object contains lat and lon, whose decimal precision can be measured against the 1,750-foot radius in § 541.001.
Whether a delivered ad was "targeted advertising" under § 541.001(31) turns on how the ad server selected it, a step that takes place off the device; a capture shows which identifier and coordinates were sent, to which host, and when. Whether § 509.002 covers an app depends on its features (social interaction, a profile, posts others can view), and whether a verified parent has changed the § 509.052 defaults shows in the account's settings.
For a SCOPE Act question, I register a test account with an age under 18, then record the ad and analytics SDKs found in the binary, the permissions and consent flow, and every request on the test device with its host, advertising ID and location fields, and whether it was sent before or after the consent or age prompt. SDK presence shows code in the binary; a capture shows what was sent. The methodology page covers what a scan checks and its limits.
I run these investigations for lawyers and for researchers working with lawyers, on one app or a list in bulk. Every static finding cites its file and line; every traffic finding cites its capture. Sign up for a CanITrustThat account to run your own research, let us run an investigation for you, or browse the scanned apps.