The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has ruled that Texas cannot enforce a provision of its SCOPE Act requiring websites to monitor and filter content deemed harmful to minors, finding the requirement pre-empted by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. The 2-1 decision is a win for tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, who argued the law would have forced platforms to censor broad, vaguely defined categories of lawful speech, and it matters because it curbs states' ability to impose content-moderation mandates on online services.

The ruling upholds a preliminary injunction first granted by a district court in August 2024, which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had unsuccessfully appealed. Judges distinguished the case from a 2024 ruling in which the same conservative-leaning court upheld age-verification requirements for pornography websites, noting that the SCOPE Act's provision was fundamentally about filtering content and therefore fell within Section 230's broad immunity for platforms hosting third-party material. The blocked provision covered content promoting or facilitating suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, bullying, grooming and trafficking, among other categories, though other parts of the law remain enforceable.