Texas must protect children online—and the Fifth Circuit has reopened the fight
The Oct. 28 order vacated the panel ruling that blocked Texas’s monitoring-and-filtering rule, giving the full Fifth Circuit a fresh chance to uphold it.
Autullo wrote: “Majority of the 17 judges opted to rehear case.” The Fifth Circuit’s October 28 order says “a majority of the circuit judges in regular active service and not disqualified” voted for rehearing en banc. The Fifth Circuit’s order says “the panel opinion in this case dated July 24, 2026, is VACATED.” Bloomberg Law reported that the order offers Texas another chance to fully enforce the SCOPE Act.
The order directs: “this cause shall be reheard by the court en banc with oral argument on a date hereafter to be fixed.”1
“the panel opinion in this case dated July 24, 2026, is VACATED.”
House Bill 18 took effect Sept. 1, 2024, imposing requirements on digital service providers, as the panel opinion recounts. Covered providers must require users to register their ages before creating accounts2.
The monitoring-and-filtering requirement directs covered providers to develop and implement a strategy to prevent known minors from encountering specified material2. That puts a duty on the service itself, where a parent’s demand for protection needs legal force.
The enforcement provisions allow action by the Texas attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division or a lawsuit by a parent or guardian of an affected known minor2. Parents should be able to invoke those obligations without depending on a company’s willingness to listen. A legal duty gives their demand consequences.
**The panel held that federal law barred Texas from enforcing the monitoring-and-filtering duty.
Requiring providers to take protective steps is a legitimate exercise of state authority on behalf of children. Parents cannot meaningfully enforce the duty Texas created if federal immunity defeats it at the threshold. The full court should let Texas enforce that duty.
Technology trade groups challenged Texas’s safeguards.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Google, Meta and X, joined NetChoice in suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on July 30, 2024. The panel opinion identifies those companies among CCIA’s members2.
The companies’ interests should not outrank a parent’s ability to demand compliance with child-protection law.
The rehearing order calls for oral argument on a date to be fixed and directs the clerk to schedule supplemental briefs1. The court must now decide whether providers can be held to the child-protection duty Texas enacted.
Parents should hold state officials to defending the enforceable duty the Legislature adopted, including families’ route to relief. The full Fifth Circuit should reject the panel’s Section 230 holding and let Texas enforce the SCOPE Act in full.
Sources
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