Texas' Online Child Safety Law Upheld by Federal Appellate Court

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has largely reversed a lower court injunction and upheld most provisions of Texas's SCOPE Act, a 2024 law requiring digital service providers to register user ages, implement parental control tools, monitor and filter content accessible to minors, prevent targeted advertising to children, and employ age verification for platforms where over one-third of content is deemed harmful to minors. The 2-1 decision allows the vast majority of the law to take effect for the first time, though one provision on content monitoring and filtering remains enjoined. The ruling follows the Supreme Court's decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld age verification requirements for sexual content.

Age verification confirms identity at the threshold but does not evaluate what happens once a verified child enters the platform, and monitoring obligations imposed on providers do not specify which harms to detect or how to surface a child at immediate risk. Guardii, backed by Startmate and a Meta Business Partner, detects grooming, sextortion, cyberbullying and CSAM as the conversation occurs, flagging hostile contact before it reaches the target and surfacing children in acute distress to parents, schools or law enforcement in real time. Where blanket verification restricts access for all to protect some, targeted detection addresses the underlying harm by identifying which child needs help and when, without requiring every user to prove their age or displacing offenders to unmonitored channels.