Faulty reasoning signals

• Framing Effect - 24.9%
• Availability Heuristic - 18.6%
• Appeal to Emotion - 13.6%

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Earlier this week, the Supreme Court said it would allow Texas to enforce a law requiring app stores to verify users' ages while the issue plays out in lower courts. The law also requires minors to obtain parental consent to download apps or make in-app purchases. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito denied the petition from plaintiffs who claim the law violates users' First Amendment right to free speech. Texas Attorney General and Republic Senate candidate Ken Paxton's office claims the law

protects children from quote dangerous modern products. CBS News legal contributor and Loyola Law School Professor Jessica Levinson is here to answer some constitutional questions about the case. So, Jessica, why are the plaintiffs arguing this is a First Amendment issue? >> So, they're arguing that this is the same as basically blocking people from going into bookstores until you check their ages. And what they're saying is because of the restrictions on these laws, that it prevents not just minors,

but in some cases adults as well from being able to access what is now not just a bookstore, but also newspapers, also online websites, that there's just a whole host of content, and particularly even political content, where there's too much of a hurdle to be able to access that. And so, the primary argument is on people not being able to receive the information to which they are entitled to under the First Amendment. Then there's other arguments like the law is overbroad. If the true concern is about protecting children,

then why do you have this type of age verification that applies in so many different circumstances? Uh there's also questions about whether the law is something called content-based, which Lindsay, you and I have talked about before, essentially meaning because there are carve-outs for some emergency websites, that that means you're deciding between what content is okay and what content is not okay. And so the challengers argument is really it's prohibiting free speech, it's vague, it's overbroad, and it's content-based.

>> Why is Texas arguing this law is allowed under the First Amendment? >> So Texas is making couple of arguments, one of which you just mentioned that this is to protect children. And as we know, whenever a state or a city or the federal government says we're protecting children, judges take that seriously as a matter of first impression. But then the question becomes, are you going about it the right way? And what Texas is saying here is that we're just regulating a product, not speech. We're

just regulating apps. The other thing that Texas is arguing is that even if we are under the First Amendment, that this is really commercial speech. And it's not a full black blackout on being able to access this speech. It's just a threshold for some people. It's an age restriction. And so what Texas is saying is this is the best way of trying to accomplish our goal of protecting children from accessing inappropriate content, addictive content, sexually explicit content, etc. >> Jessica Levenson, thank you.