Texas is suing TikTok for allegedly violating its new children’s privacy law

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against TikTok alleging the company violated the state’s new child privacy law. It will be the first test of Texas’ Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act since it went into effect about a month ago.

Under the law, parts of which were struck down by a federal judge, social networks are required to verify the age of young users and provide parental control features, including the ability for parents to opt their children out of data collection.

Paxton suspects that TikTok’s existing parental control features are inadequate. “However, Defendants do not provide parents or guardians of users known to be 13 to 17 years of age with tools that allow parents to control or limit the privacy settings and multiple accounts of a known child,” the lawsuit states. “For example, parents or guardians do not have the ability to control the Defendants’ sharing, disclosure, and sale of a known child’s identifying information, or to control the Defendants’ ability to display targeted advertising to a known child.”

The lawsuit also says the app’s “Family Matching” tool is not “commercially reasonable” because it requires parents to create their own TikTok account and because teenagers are free to refuse their parents’ requests to set up the monitoring tool. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The app already prevents highly targeted advertising to anyone under 18.

“We strongly disagree with these allegations, and in fact, we provide strong protections for youth and parents, including family pairings, all of which are publicly available,” the company said in a statement. in X. “We stand for the protections we provide to families.”

The case adds to TikTok’s mounting legal challenges in the United States. The company is currently fighting a lawsuit that could lead to a complete ban on the app in the United States. It is also facing a separate Justice Department lawsuit related to children’s privacy.

Update, October 3, 2024, 8:05 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from TikTok.