Alabama has joined Texas, Utah and Louisiana and become the fourth state to enact an app store accountability law.  Signed into law Feb. 17 by Gov. Kay Ivey, HB 161, the App Store Accountability Act, is set to take effect on January 1, 2027.  The Alabama law draws heavily from the prior app store accountability statutes, incorporating many of the statutory requirements from those three laws. Similar to the other laws, under the Alabama Law, app stores must verify a user's age category and obtain verifiable parental consent before a minor can download an app, purchase an app or make an in-app purchase.  In addition, app developers must notify app stores if they make significant changes to an app to allow the app stores to notify users of the changes and to obtain renewed verifiable parental consent for a minor's continued use of the app.  

The Alabama law does have a few noticeable differences:

1. Pre-Installed Apps: Unlike the other statutes, the Alabama law specifically applies to pre-installed apps, requiring app stores to provide age category information to developers about users of pre-installed apps and to take reasonable measures to obtain verifiable parental consent in connection with those apps.  
2. Retroactivity: The other prior app store accountability acts only apply to users who create accounts after their effective dates. The Alabama act is retroactive.  It gives App Stores until October 1, 2027, to verify the user's age category and obtain verifiable parental consent if the user is a minor for all app store accounts created before October 2, 2026.  

3. Default Requirements: The Alabama act's language related to age-related app defaults is broader than the prior acts. While the Texas law had no default requirements, the Utah law required developers to implement any “developer-created safety-related features or defaults” based on the age category information received by the app stores. The Louisiana law required the same but also had the developers consider “age data independently collected by the developer.” Similar to the Louisiana law, Alabama requires developers to consider age data from the app store and collected by the developer.  However, the developers may have to implement more features and defaults — specifically, the Alabama law requires developers to implement “any developer-created age-related restrictions, safety-related features or defaults.”

   As the year continues, we anticipate more states will enact app store accountability acts, including the four states that have already introduced similar legislation: Kansas, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and South Dakota.