Cybersecurity Policy Report, Injunction Upheld to Block Texas’ Restrictions on Targeted Ads to Kids, (Jul 24, 2026)

By Carrie DeLeon

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (New Orleans) today largely affirmed an injunction issued by a lower court blocking certain parts of a Texas law called the SCOPE Act which is intended to protect children under age 18 on social media by restricting data collection, banning targeted advertising, and requiring parental oversight.

The Fifth Circuit released a decision today in a consolidated proceeding involving related challenges to the 2023 law regulating social media websites: one case brought by NetChoice LLC and the Computer & Communications Industry Association and a separate case filed by the nonprofit Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), two individual Texans, and an advertising firm, the Ampersand Group. The lawsuits similarly challenged the law’s requirement that certain social media-based “digital service providers” monitor and filter content accessible to known minors to prevent exposure to several categories of potentially harmful speech.

The 2023 law (HB 18) seeks to prevent digital service providers (DSPs) from using a digital service to display “targeted advertising” to a minor without the consent of a verified parent. The law’s unlawful ads provision requires covered DSPs to make a commercially reasonable effort to prevent advertisers from targeting known minors with advertisements “that facilitate, promote, or offer a product, service, or activity that is unlawful for a minor to use or engage in.”

NetChoice and CCIA say the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act would require websites “to affirmatively block some content on minors’ accounts.” SEAT said it was concerned that its members would “lose access to constitutionally protected speech due to the monitoring and filtering, age-verification, and targeted ads requirements.” Both plaintiffs filed motions for a preliminary injunction. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas granted the motions except as to the age-registration requirement and other provisions not specifically challenged. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R.) appealed the preliminary injunctions.

The Fifth Circuit today largely affirmed the lower court’s ruling in the case brought by NetChoice and CCIA but not the SEAT case.

“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 , 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1),” the court said.

The court added in its ruling, “Because we hold that the monitoring and filtering requirement is preempted by Section 230 of the CDA, we do not reach the constitutional issues presented here. CCIA and NetChoice have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their preemption claim, which is enough to support the district court’s granting of a preliminary injunction in their favor.”

Today’s ruling “keeps the government from dictating what lawful speech Texas families see online, and leaves that decision with parents, where it belongs,” NetChoice said in a statement today.

“HB 18 would have forced websites to censor broad, vaguely defined categories of lawful speech. The Fifth Circuit is right to keep it blocked. Parents, not the government, are best positioned to decide what is appropriate for their own families, and today’s ruling protects that fundamental right,” said Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. (Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice LLC v. Ken Paxton, attorney general, State of Texas, and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, et al., v. Ken Paxton, attorney general, State of Texas, cases 24-50721, 25-50096).

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