US appeals court lets Texas enforce social media age checks, setting up supreme court fight

A federal appeals court has allowed Texas to require social media companies to verify the age of every user and to obtain parental consent for anyone under 18, in a ruling that directly contradicts a decision by a different court on California's version of the same law and all but guarantees a supreme court hearing.

The fifth circuit court of appeals in New Orleans ruled 2-1 on Thursday that the Texas law, which has been on hold since 2024, regulated conduct rather than speech and that the state's interest in protecting minors outweighed the burden on companies. In August the ninth circuit in San Francisco had blocked California's law on the grounds that requiring adults to prove their age before speaking was itself a restriction on speech.

The two rulings leave the country with a legal map in which the same platform must verify ages in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi but is forbidden to require it in California, Washington and Arizona. Twenty-two states have passed some form of age verification law since 2023; most are stayed pending litigation.

“A circuit split this clean on a question this large does not stay unresolved,” said Prof Dana Whitfield, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University. “The court will almost certainly take it, probably in the spring term, and the ruling will decide whether the internet in America has an age gate on it. I would not want to guess which way.”

NetChoice, the trade body that brought both cases on behalf of the largest platforms, said it would seek a rehearing by the full fifth circuit and petition the supreme court if that failed. A spokesperson said the Texas law would “require every American to hand over identity documents to log on, in the name of children who will find their way around it in an afternoon”.

Supporters of the law said the ruling vindicated a decade of warnings. Carla Mendes, a Houston mother of three who testified for the law in the state legislature, said: “My 14-year-old cannot buy a lottery ticket or a beer, but a company in another state can keep her up until 3am and sell what it learns. If the price is that I show my driving licence, I will show it.”

Texas has said it will begin enforcement on 1 January. The law allows the state attorney general to seek fines of up to $10,000 per violation; it does not specify how age is to be verified, leaving platforms to choose between document uploads, facial age estimation and third-party services.

The United Kingdom, which introduced mandatory age checks for pornography and certain social media features in 2025, has been cited in briefs on both sides: by supporters as evidence that verification is workable, and by opponents, pointing to a surge in VPN use among British teenagers, as evidence that it is not.