Louisiana Rewrote Its App Store Law Before It Took Effect. What Will Parents Get in 2027?

Who should decide what apps a twelve-year-old downloads: the child, the app store, or the parent?

Louisiana answered that question once in 2025. Before that law ever took effect, the Legislature repealed it and passed HB977 in its place. The new rules start July 1, 2027.

When someone in Louisiana creates an app store account, the store must request age information and verify the person's age category. The law accepts commercially available methods reasonably designed to be accurate. A real-time age verification system authorized by the Office of Motor Vehicles is listed as one option. The statute says "including but not limited to," so the state system is one choice among several.

If the account belongs to a minor, the store must link it to a parent account. Before the minor downloads an app, buys one, opens a pre-loaded app, or turns on in-app purchases, the store needs verifiable parental consent.

For a minor, a parent's statement of the child's age, together with ordinary account information, counts as a verification method. A child does not have to hand over a government ID to use an app store.

The store may collect only what it needs to verify age, obtain parental consent, and keep compliance records. The data must be encrypted when it is sent. It can pass between the store and app developers only as the law requires, and a developer may not sell a user's age category.

Only the attorney general can enforce the law. Fines run up to $10,000 per violation, and a company gets 45 days' notice to fix a problem before the attorney general can sue. There is no private right of action.

Age verification is the category of law most likely to grow into a digital ID system. Picture every app store account in a state carrying a verified age category, and a state motor vehicle office offering real-time age checks. Those two pieces could support something much larger. HB977 sits on the protective end of that category. The parent attestation route, the data limits, and the ban on selling age data all point toward privacy. The rules and vendors Louisiana settles on before July 2027 will decide whether it stays there.

Texas passed a similar app store law in 2025. An industry group sued, and a federal district court blocked the law in December 2025. The Fifth Circuit stayed that injunction in June 2026, and the Supreme Court declined to step in that July, so the Texas law can be enforced while the appeal continues. Louisiana's rules will take effect with that case still in the background.

IPS rates HB977 as MONITOR. Putting parents back in charge of their children's app downloads is a conservative goal, and this law protects families better than most laws in its category. The verification system behind it needs close attention as it is built.

Rep. Beau Beaullieu (R) was the sole sponsor. The House passed HB977 94-0 on April 22, 2026, and the Senate passed it 36-0 on May 11. Governor Jeff Landry signed it May 15, 2026, as Act 185. The repeal of the 2025 law took effect on signature.

The parental consent rule is sound. The next year of rule-writing will decide whether the age checks behind it stay that way.

This is our read of the law. We encourage you to read it yourself and reach your own conclusions.