Texas SCOPE Act ruling blocks online filtering mandate for minors
The 5th Circuit kept Texas from forcing platforms to filter content for minors, citing Section 230, while leaving other rules in place.
By Dominic Okoye · Staff Writer
· 3 min read
The Texas SCOPE Act ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit blocks the state from enforcing a requirement that certain websites and apps monitor and filter content available to minors. In a 2-1 decision Friday, the court sided with the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice on their Section 230 challenge, keeping a preliminary injunction in place against that part of the law.
The disputed provision applied to some social media-based digital service providers that collect or process personally identifying information. It would have required those services to restrict known minors’ exposure to content covering categories including suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, stalking, bullying, harassment, grooming, trafficking, child pornography and other sexual exploitation or abuse, as well as material considered obscene under Texas law.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed after a district court blocked the monitoring and filtering requirement in August 2024. The appeals court said CCIA and NetChoice had shown they were likely to succeed on their argument that the requirement is preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which limits efforts to treat online services as the publisher or speaker of third-party content.
What does the Texas SCOPE Act ruling mean for platforms?
For platform operators, the ruling means Texas cannot currently force covered services to screen and remove categories of lawful content for minors under the blocked provision. The decision does not invalidate the entire law, and it leaves several compliance obligations available for enforcement.
The panel distinguished the case from an earlier 5th Circuit decision that upheld a Texas age-verification rule for pornographic websites. The court said the SCOPE Act provision at issue here was different because it was directed at content filtering rather than age verification.
NetChoice said the law would have required websites to censor broad categories of lawful speech and argued that parents, rather than the government, should decide what is appropriate for their families. The trade group framed the decision as a free-speech win. The court’s ruling, however, rests on statutory preemption under Section 230 as well as the platform groups’ likelihood of success at this early stage, rather than a final judgment on every claim.
Paxton argued that the state law imposed compliance duties rather than liability for user content, and that it fit with Section 230’s child-protection goals. The 5th Circuit majority rejected that framing, concluding that enforcement actions over monitoring, screening and deletion of content would arise from platforms’ role as publishers.
Which parts of the Texas law can still be enforced?
The decision was not a complete defeat for Texas. The court held that Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, a student group that also challenged the law, lacked standing. The judges said the law did not apply directly to the students and had not yet been enforced against platform operators when they filed suit.
Because of that standing decision, other parts of the SCOPE Act remain outside the injunction. Those provisions include requirements for platforms to make users register their ages before creating accounts, avoid showing targeted ads to known minors, make commercially reasonable efforts to stop advertisers from targeting known minors with ads for illegal products or activities, and verify users are at least 18 if more than one-third of the platform’s content is obscene.
The panel included Judge Patrick Higginbotham, appointed by President Ronald Reagan; Judge James Ho, appointed by President Donald Trump; and Judge Dana Douglas, appointed by President Joe Biden. The judges were unanimous on the student group’s standing issue.
Ho dissented on the filtering mandate. He argued that the SCOPE Act regulated platform curation rather than publication of third-party speech, and would have dissolved the injunction entirely. The majority said it was applying 5th Circuit precedent, under which Section 230 protects decisions tied to third-party content from civil liability while the First Amendment separately protects editorial discretion from unconstitutional regulation.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
