Supreme Court Upholds Texas Law Requiring Age Verification to Access Pornography

The Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law that requires users of pornographic websites to verify their age in order to access content. The Texas law, enacted in 2023, aims to limit minors’ exposure to pornography but drew criticism from the adult entertainment industry and other critics who believe the requirement is a violation of freedom of speech. More than 20 other states have implemented similar laws in recent years. The Supreme Court ruling will allow the controversial law to stay in place. Writing for the majority in a 6-3 opinion that broke down along ideological lines, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said: “The statute advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. “It is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data,” he continued. A federal judge previously blocked the law a day before it was set to take effect, saying it “deters adults’ access to legal sexually explicit material, far beyond the interest of protecting minors.” An appeals court froze that decision in a divided ruling, however. The law “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” the majority opinion read. In April 2024, representatives of the adult entertainment industry asked the court to temporarily block the Texas law. In the appeal, put forward by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), they argued that “The Act requires adults to comply with intrusive age verification measures that mandate the submission of personally identifying information over the Internet.” This “imposed substantial burdens” on adult access to free speech, the ACLU argued. The Supreme Court declined at the time to block the law while the appeal moved forward. Read more: How an Ordained Rabbi Ended Up Owning the World’s Most Famous Porn Company The organization filed another brief to the Supreme Court in September 2024 after it agreed to take up the case.  he ACLU again argued that Americans had a First Amendment right to access explicit and pornographic content online, and that they “should be allowed to exercise that right as they see fit, without having to worry about exposing their personal identifying information in the process,” in the words of ACLU Staff Attorney Vera Eidelman. But the Supreme Court ruled that states hold the power to prevent minors from seeing speech or content that is deemed obscene. “That power includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access such speech without first submitting proof of age,” the decision said. In line with multiple other significant rulings issued by the court on Friday, the six conservative judges Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts comprised the majority. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all dissented. Other major court rulings issued on Friday, the last opinion day of the Supreme Court term, included a decision limiting lower courts’ ability to block President Donald Trump’s executive order curbing birthright citizenship. Another ruling backed the right of parents to opt their elementary-school children out of lessons that engage with books featuring LGBTQ+ characters or topics.  In both cases, the justices were split along ideological lines. Several conservative justices joined the court’s liberals in another anticipated ruling related to a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, however. The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a taskforce that recommends preventive health care that insurers are required to cover at no extra cost for users under the sweeping health care law. Had the court found the task force unconstitutional, millions of Americans would have been at risk of having to pay out of pocket for services recommended by the task force to prevent a wide range of conditions, including HIV, cancer, and diabetes.