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Texas Lawsuit Against OpenAI: Keeping Minors Off ChatGPT
The Texas lawsuit against OpenAI asks a court to bar minors from ChatGPT. What the petition requests, how a ban would work, and how likely a judge is to agree.
The Texas lawsuit against OpenAI is the first state case to ask a judge, in writing, to stop the company from “offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas.” That line sits near the end of a 67-page petition that Attorney General Ken Paxton filed on October 23, 2026, in Collin County district court, naming OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman personally. It also asks that no new OpenAI model reach Texas users until a court-approved outside evaluator signs off on its safety guardrails.
Neither request is in effect. Nothing has been decided. But if you have a teenager in Texas who uses ChatGPT for homework, you are entitled to know what is being asked, how it would work if granted, and how often courts actually grant requests like this.
Key Takeaways
- Texas filed on October 23, 2026, under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the SCOPE Act, a 2023 Texas law about minors’ data and parental tools. It seeks a jury trial, penalties of $10,000 per violation and more than $1 million in total relief.
- The petition’s wish list includes barring ChatGPT for minors in Texas, mandatory age verification, and court-approved review of every new model before release.
- Blocking minors in practice means checking the age of every Texas user, adults included. That is where the hardest legal and technical problems sit.
- Courts have struck down broad limits on minors’ access to speech before (Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 2011), but upheld narrower age-verification rules (Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 2025). A chatbot case is new ground.
- For families, nothing changes today. The more likely near-term outcomes are motions, delay and possibly negotiated design changes, not a sudden ban.
What the Texas lawsuit against OpenAI actually says
The Texas petition is a civil enforcement suit brought by the state’s Consumer Protection Division, filed nine days after eight other states sued OpenAI in one day. You can read it yourself: the Attorney General’s office posted the full petition. It names six OpenAI corporate entities plus Altman, and says Texas seeks to hold Altman “personally liable” for statements he made about the company’s products.
The petition rests on two counts. Count I is the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Count II is the SCOPE Act (Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment), which requires “digital service providers” to limit collection of known minors’ data and to give a “verified parent” tools to supervise a minor’s account. Texas argues ChatGPT fails that test: it alleges OpenAI does not verify who a parent is, does not let parents control data sharing or targeted advertising for a minor, and that parental controls launched in September 2025 are voluntary and alert parents only in “limited situations.”
The opening summary is blunt. It alleges that “minors have become addicted to a tool that feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight.” It also cites independent testing of ChatGPT for Teens, launched in August 2026, including Common Sense Media’s finding that “a teen can spend an hour talking about self-harm without their parent getting a single alert.”
Those are allegations and quotations chosen by one side. OpenAI told the Texas Tribune it has worked with experts to reduce risks and add safeguards, and that it is willing to work with Texas and other states on rules for the whole industry, “not just one company.”
The full list of what Texas wants a judge to order
The “prayer,” the part of a petition where the plaintiff lists what it wants, asks the court to temporarily and permanently stop OpenAI from 14 practices. The ones that matter most to families are below, in the petition’s own words where quoted, with our read of what each would mean in practice.
| Request in the petition | What it would mean for a Texas family | Main hurdle |
|---|---|---|
| Stop “offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas” | Under-18 Texans could not legally hold a ChatGPT account | Requires verifying every user’s age; First Amendment challenges to broad minor bans |
| Stop offering content unsuitable for children “without requiring adequate age verification” | Adults and teens alike asked to prove age, by ID, face scan or another method | Privacy cost for adults; accuracy of age estimation |
| Stop offering a product “easily accessible to children without parental consent” | Parental consent could become a condition of any teen access | Overlaps with partly litigated SCOPE Act provisions |
| Stop features that “promote compulsive, prolonged, and unhealthy use” | Possible changes to streaks, memory, follow-up prompts | Defining which features count |
| No new model for Texas users unless a court-approved independent evaluator has “reviewed its safety guardrails and approved its release” | New versions could reach Texas later than elsewhere | Courts rarely supervise product engineering |
| Stop a product that “falsely represents itself as having human emotions” | Bots would have to stop talking as if they feel | Overlaps with New York’s new chatbot law |
| Civil penalties of $10,000 per violation, disgorgement, fees | Money to the state, not families | Requires winning at trial or settling |
Notice that the minor ban and the evaluator requirement are the two that would change daily life most. They are also the two that ask the most of a court.
How a minor ban would work, technically
A rule that says “no minors” sounds simple until you build it. To keep a 15-year-old off a website, the site has to know the user is 15. That means one of three things, each with trade-offs.
Self-declared age. This is what most apps do now: type a birthday. The petition complains that ChatGPT’s free version has “no gatekeeping or age verification mechanism whatsoever,” and that paid accounts ask for an age without verifying it. Any kid who can do subtraction can beat this.
Age estimation. OpenAI says it is building a system to predict whether a user is over or under 18, and that when it is “not confident” it will default to the under-18 experience and let adults prove their age. We explain how that guessing works in how ChatGPT predicts under-18 users. It is probabilistic, so it will misclassify some adults as teens and some teens as adults. Common Sense’s October testing found adult-registered test accounts never switched to the teen experience even when testers said they were 13.
Age verification. A government ID, a face scan checked by a vendor, or a credit card. This is the only method that comes close to “blocking minors,” and it means every Texas adult who wants ChatGPT hands over something sensitive. That privacy cost is a big part of why courts look hard at these rules.
Then come the workarounds. A Texas teen with a VPN appears to be in Oklahoma. A teen blocked from ChatGPT can open Gemini, Claude, Copilot or the chatbot inside Snapchat, none of which this lawsuit touches. A ban on one product shifts use more than it stops it, unless the rule covers everyone.
How likely is a judge to grant it?
Short answer: a full minor ban is the least likely outcome, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. Here is what shapes the odds.
Injunctions are the exception, not the rule. Early injunctions are granted before a case is fully tried, so judges want a strong showing that the plaintiff is likely to win. A state enforcing a consumer statute may have an easier path than a private party, because the statute itself authorizes injunctions. Even so, an order that removes a widely used tool from millions of teenagers would be extraordinary.
The First Amendment looms over minor bans. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California’s law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors, holding that a state cannot create new categories of unprotected speech just for children. In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (decided June 27, 2025), the Court upheld Texas’s age-verification law for pornography sites under intermediate scrutiny because it only “incidentally” burdened adults. A chatbot used for algebra homework sits much closer to Brown than to pornography, though Texas would argue it is regulating a product’s design, not speech.
Whether chatbot output is speech is unsettled. In May 2025, Judge Anne Conway in the Character.AI wrongful-death case declined to rule that a chatbot’s output is protected speech, saying she was not prepared to decide that “at this stage,” according to Washington Post reporting republished by the Media Institute. That leaves room for Texas, and also guarantees a fight.
The SCOPE Act has already been partly trimmed. On July 24, 2026, the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 that the SCOPE Act’s requirement for platforms to monitor and filter harmful content is preempted by Section 230 of federal law, while upholding its age-verification piece, Reuters reported. That ruling involved social media, not chatbots, and Section 230 protects platforms from liability for third-party content. Whether it covers text an AI generates itself is one of the open questions in all of these cases.
Politics is part of the picture. The Texas Tribune notes Paxton filed while running for U.S. Senate, that Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI now running rival xAI, is his campaign’s largest single donor, and that Texas has hired outside lawyers including Tony Buzbee. None of that makes the legal claims weaker or stronger. It is context a careful reader should have.
Our read: the realistic range runs from dismissal of some claims, to long litigation, to a settlement with design changes such as stronger age checks and parent tools. A court-ordered ban on all Texas minors is possible on paper and unlikely in practice. That is an informed judgment, not a prediction.
What Texas parents can do while the case plays out
Decide your own rule instead of waiting for a court’s
Whether ChatGPT is right for your 13-year-old is a question you can answer this week. Some families allow it for homework in shared rooms only. Some wait until high school. Write your rule down so it does not shift with every headline.
Set up the teen account and link it, knowing its limits
If your teen uses ChatGPT, a linked teen account gives you more than nothing: quiet hours, some content settings and limited safety alerts. The Common Sense testing shows those alerts are unreliable, so treat the link as a seatbelt, not a guardian.
Keep an eye on age verification prompts
Texas has other age-verification fights under way, including app stores, which we explain in what Texas app store age checks mean for parents. If your child suddenly gets asked for an ID or a face scan, talk through what is being collected and by whom before anyone uploads anything.
Talk about the “fake compassion” claim directly
The petition’s most useful phrase for families is the claim that ChatGPT “feigns human compassion.” Ask your teen: when the bot says it understands you, what is actually happening? The honest answer is that it predicts comforting words. It does not know or care about them.
What not to do
Do not tell your kids ChatGPT is “about to be banned.” It may never be, and a prediction that fails teaches them to ignore you. Say what is true: Texas has asked for a ban, and judges have not decided.
What to Watch For Over the Next 3 Months
- Week 4: Watch for OpenAI’s first moves, such as an attempt to move the case to federal court or a motion to dismiss. Also watch for any request by Texas for a temporary injunction, which would bring the minor-ban question to a hearing sooner.
- Month 2 red flags: At home, look for a teen switching to unsupervised chatbots or VPNs because they expect a ban. Prohibition rumors can push use out of sight.
- Month 3 self-check: Is your family rule about chatbots written down, and does your teen know why it exists? If a court acts, you will be adjusting a plan, not starting from zero.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ChatGPT banned for minors in Texas now?
No. Texas has asked a court to order that, and no judge has ruled. ChatGPT works for Texas teens exactly as it did before October 23. OpenAI’s own terms already require users to be at least 13, with parental permission for minors, and that has not changed.
Why is Sam Altman named personally?
Texas says it seeks to hold Altman personally liable for his “direct involvement” in the alleged conduct and for public statements he made about OpenAI’s products. Naming executives is unusual but not unheard of in consumer cases. Florida did the same in June. Whether a court allows personal liability is a separate fight.
What is the SCOPE Act?
A 2023 Texas law that requires digital services to limit what they collect from known minors, restrict targeted ads to them, and give verified parents supervision tools. Parts of it have been blocked in federal court. In July 2026 the Fifth Circuit struck its content-filtering requirement while upholding age verification.
How long will the Texas case take?
Probably years if it goes to trial. Texas has asked for a jury. Complex consumer cases against large companies routinely take two or more years, and many settle. A temporary injunction hearing could happen sooner if the state requests one.
Would a ban stop teens from using AI chatbots?
Not by itself. The lawsuit targets ChatGPT only. Other chatbots, including those built into apps your child already uses, would not be affected, and VPNs make location-based blocks easy to dodge. Conversation and supervision at home do more than any single-product ban.
About the author
Ricky Flores is the founder of HiWave Makers and an electrical engineer with 15+ years of experience building consumer technology at Apple, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. He writes about how kids learn to build, think, and create in a tech-saturated world. Read more at hiwavemakers.com.
Sources
- Office of the Texas Attorney General. (2026, October 23). State of Texas v. OpenAI Global, LLC, et al., Original Petition, Collin County District Court. https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/press/OpenAI%20Final.pdf
- Texas Tribune. (2026, October 23). “Ken Paxton sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over ChatGPT.” https://www.texastribune.org/2026/10/23/ken-paxton-chatgpt-openai-lawsuit-texas-attorney-general/
- Supreme Court of the United States. (2011). Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/08-1448
- Supreme Court of the United States. (2025, June 27). Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, No. 23-1122. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1122_3e04.pdf
- OpenAI. (2025, September). “Building towards age prediction.” https://openai.com/index/building-towards-age-prediction/
- Reuters, via The Star. (2026, July 25). “US appeals court blocks part of Texas children’s online safety law.” https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/07/25/us-appeals-court-blocks-part-of-texas-children039s-online-safety-law
- Tiku, N., & Sands, L. (2025, May 22). “Judge rejects claim that chatbots have free speech.” The Washington Post, republished by the Media Institute. https://www.mediainstitute.org/2025/05/22/judge-rejects-claim-that-chatbots-have-free-speech/
- Common Sense Media. (2026, October 7). “ChatGPT for Teens poses unacceptable risk to kids, Common Sense Media finds.” https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/chatgpt-for-teens-poses-unacceptable-risk-to-kids-common-sense-media-finds
