A Utah law that requires parents to approve any app their child downloads is unconstitutional, a computer industry trade group argues in a federal lawsuit.
The law, SB142, requires app store providers to verify the age of each user who downloads an app, and requires parents to give consent to a minor to download a new app to their phone. The law is mostly aimed at the two largest app providers, Apple and Google.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association contends that the law violates customers’ First Amendment rights, according to a lawsuit the not-for-profit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Utah. It represents companies in the computer and tech sectors.
“When a state erects a barrier to the vast library of online speech unless the speaker jumps through a series of age-gating hoops, it must receive exacting constitutional scrutiny,” said Stephanie Joyce, senior vice president of CCIA and director of the association’s Litigation Center, in a statement.
Past court rulings that apply such scrutiny show that Utah’s law ”warrants judicial intervention to ensure that adults and young people can continue to access the lawful online speech of their choice,” Joyce said.
A judge blocked a similar law in Texas in December, shortly before it was set to take effect at the start of the year, Joyce noted. Texas’s law will not be enforced until two lawsuits, one of them filed by CCIA, are resolved.
Gov. Spencer Cox signed SB142 into law last March, after the Utah Legislature overwhelmingly approved it. Parts of it went into effect in May, while other sections are scheduled to go into effect later this year.
Proponents say the law will give parents some control over what their children can access online.
“You’d never let your child enter into a legally binding contract,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, said when proposing the law last year. However, “parents are doing that every day,” Weiler said, when children download apps, all of which require users to agree to terms and conditions.
Bill Duncan, a fellow at the Utah thinktank Sutherland Institute, said the lawsuit’s advocates “stretch the principle of free speech beyond recognition when their arguments convey that the First Amendment prevents common-sense parental oversight of app purchases by children.”
In a statement, Duncan said, “The constitution’s free speech clause protects the public sharing of honest opinions. The existence of this law does not prevent app stores, app developers or users from sharing their opinions freely. It merely regulates the conduct of app stores in contracting with minors.”
Duncan said “well-crafted app store legislation, like Utah’s, does not curtail any constitutional protections of free speech.” He concluded by urging courts to “reject this attempt to prevent Utah’s parents from effectively helping their children navigate online commerce.”
The lawsuit names as defendants Derek Brown, Utah’s attorney general, and Katherine Hass, director of the Utah Department of Commerce’s Division of Consumer Protection, both in their official capacities.