The Supreme Court denied emergency petitions from challengers seeking to block Texas's Senate Bill 2420, allowing the app store age verification law to remain in full effect. Justice Samuel Alito issued terse one-sentence denials in cases captioned Students Engaged in Advancing Texas v. Paxton and Computer & Communications Industry Association v. Paxton, without providing comment. The law, which requires app marketplace operators to verify users' ages using commercially reasonable methods and obtain explicit parental approval before minors can download apps, has been in provisional effect since June 4, 2025 when the Fifth Circuit granted Texas a stay pending appeal. The Supreme Court's action removes the last short-term obstacle to enforcement, with the Fifth Circuit hearing full First Amendment arguments in early August to determine whether the law survives constitutional scrutiny.
The European Union is moving closer to implementing stricter measures to protect children online, with officials set to issue findings against Meta's Facebook and Instagram before summer ends. An EU official told AFP that the commission is examining how Meta's services may cause addictive behaviour in children, marking a significant escalation in enforcement action. According to Reset Tech director Michiel van Hulten, the EU must focus on measures that ensure platforms prove their products are safe before they can be used by children. The EU already has significant legal tools through an online content law that forces platforms to ensure harmful content is swiftly removed and bans targeted advertisements to children, though critics say the EU has been timid about enforcing these measures.
According to CoinDesk, zero-knowledge proofs can demonstrate someone is over 18 or over 13 without revealing their name, date of birth, or requiring document storage. The EU's age-verification app is designed to prove age 'without sharing any other personal information,' representing the correct architecture for age verification. However, as noted by the report, the laws mandating verification rarely mandate privacy-preserving architecture, instead requiring age gates with minimal regard for data minimization. The US KIDS Act pushes platforms toward age checks without requiring privacy-preserving methods at all. Apple's Declared Age Range API delivers only age brackets (under 13, 13-15, 16-17, or 18+) to developers while holding identity evidence internally, providing meaningful privacy protection at the developer-facing layer but maintaining centralized government-ID data in Apple's systems.
As reported by CoinDesk, the real choice is between two approaches to age verification: one that minimizes data and forgets users after verification, and one that maximizes data and remembers everyone forever. The report emphasizes that protecting children online is legitimate, but anonymous browsing and encrypted messaging are essential for dissidents, abuse survivors, journalists and ordinary people. The technology to verify age without surveilling exists and is deployable today, but whether lawmakers write privacy-preserving architecture into rules or build global identity-tracking systems remains a critical decision point. The Supreme Court's 2025 ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton established intermediate scrutiny for age verification laws targeting sexually explicit content, but challengers argue this standard cannot extend to blanket restrictions on all app categories, with the Fifth Circuit hearing in August set to determine the appropriate legal standard.
