Alabama App Store Accountability Act (HB 161, Act 2026-59) ↗
Signed 2026-02-18; Section 15 sets the effective date at 2027-01-01, with a phase-in requiring parental consent for accounts in existence on 2026-10-02 by 2027-10-01. Alabama is the fourth state to enact an app-store-accountability law (after Texas, Utah, and Louisiana). No known legal challenge to HB 161 as of 2026-07-04.
Primary enrolled text verified (age categories, developer duties, AG-exclusive enforcement, $7,500-per-violation penalty, and the Section 15 effective date of 2027-01-01). Signing date (2026-02-18) is from contemporaneous press (Alabama Reporter, 2026-02-19, consistent with Senate passage 2026-02-05 and House concurrence 2026-02-10); a later law-firm post implied 2026-03-09, which appears to be that post's publication date, not the signing date. The Act also imposes substantial app-store-provider duties (age verification, parent-account affiliation, verifiable parental consent, data protection, rulemaking by the AG) not yet decomposed into obligations here. Status is `delayed` (effective 2027-01-01, no litigation known as of 2026-07-04).
Scope
Two duty-holder roles: a 'developer' (an entity that owns or controls an app made available through an app store, Section 1(9)) and an 'app store provider' (an entity that owns, operates, or controls an app store, Section 1(7)).
Developer duties (Section 9) and app-store-provider duties (age verification, parent-account affiliation, verifiable-parental-consent gateway) are distinct; Section 12 gives a developer a safe harbor for good-faith reliance on the app store's age-category and parental-consent signals.
Penalties
- Model
- Per violation
- Detail
- A knowing or reckless violation is a deceptive trade practice under Chapter 19 of Title 8, Code of Alabama 1975. The Attorney General has exclusive jurisdiction to bring an action and may collect a civil penalty of up to $7,500 per violation plus reasonable attorney fees and court costs; punitive damages are available for a consistent pattern of knowing or reckless conduct (Section 11).
- Enforcer
- Alabama Attorney General (exclusive jurisdiction)
- Private right of action
- No
Key dates
- Signed
- 2026-02-18
- Effective
- 2027-01-01
Obligations (2)
Verify, through the app store's data-sharing methods, the age category of users in Alabama and, for a minor account, whether verifiable parental consent has been obtained.
Statute’s own ages: Age categories (Section 1(2)): under 13; at least 13 and under 16; at least 16 and under 18; and 18 or older. 'Minor' means an individual under 18 unless married or legally emancipated (Section 1(11)).
Use age-category data received from the app store only to enforce developer-created age-related restrictions/defaults, ensure legal compliance, or implement safety features; do not share age-category data with any person.
Cross-state comparisons
- similarut-sb142 (Utah): Near-identical app-store-accountability model: the app store verifies age and relays age-category and parental-consent signals, and developers age-rate their apps and consume those signals. Both give developers a good-faith-reliance safe harbor.
- similartx-sb2420 (Texas): Both are App Store Accountability Acts assigning age verification and the parental-consent gateway to the app store provider while imposing signal-consumption and data-use-limitation duties on developers.
- similarca-ab1043 (California): Shares the platform-generates-signal / developer-consumes-signal architecture, but California's AB 1043 uses an operating-system-level age-bracket signal and does not require verifiable parental consent, whereas Alabama's HB 161 routes verifiable parental consent through the app store.