Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pax­ton Secures Emer­gency Court Order Forc­ing Dis­cord to Pro­tect Texas Chil­dren and Stop Lying to Their Parents

Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured an emergency Temporary Restraining Order against Discord, forcing the platform to immediately stop defaulting Texas children's accounts to its weakest safety settings and to stop marketing itself to parents as "safe by design" while those very defaults leave children exposed to predators. The order was signed the same day the State filed lawsuit against Discord.

"Discord designed a predator's paradise, switched off the safeguards by default, and looked Texas parents in the eye and called it safe. That is not negligence. That is evil dressed up as a safety policy," said Attorney General Paxton. "A court ordered Discord to stop, and I will pursue this company with the full and unrelenting force of the law until every child in Texas is protected from the sick predators it invited in. Discord was warned again and again and did nothing. It will not get to ignore Texas."

The TRO requires Discord to immediately reconfigure four key default settings to their most protective state for all Texas accounts: blocking sensitive content rather than merely blurring it, disabling friend requests from "Everyone," turning off direct-message social permissions, and setting spam filtering to "Filter All." These settings govern the most common pathway predators use to reach children, and Discord provides its product with them switched off, forcing families to find and fix them on their own.

The court also barred Discord from representing to Texas consumers that its platform is "safe by design," "safe by default," that safety is "at the core of everything" it does, or that it enforces a "zero-tolerance" policy, wherever those claims are inconsistent with how the product actually operates. Discord must additionally suspend the automatic 90-day expiration of user violation records and preserve all enforcement and moderation data. It must also file a verified report within fourteen days disclosing its true default settings, the percentage of its workforce devoted to safety, and data on how easily banned users return.

The State's petition documents the human cost of these choices. In one case cited in the filing, a 13-year-old Texas girl was allegedly groomed on Discord and sexually assaulted in her own home. She is not alone. The petition describes a platform federal prosecutors have called a hunting ground for those who target the most vulnerable. A hearing on the State's request for a temporary injunction is set for June 5, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. in Collin County District Court. To read the TRO, click here.