Supreme Court Upholds Texas Law Requiring Age Verification To Shield Kids From Pornography

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday to uphold a Texas law requiring users to verify their age before accessing pornography, handing a defeat to a trade organization for the porn industry.

The case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, focused on a requirement for users to demonstrate that they are 18 years old or older to access pornographic websites. The law prompted PornHub to suspend access for all Texas users while claiming that the legislation infringed on free speech.

The ruling affirms a lower court’s decision against a trade group working on behalf of the pornography industry.

“Age-verification laws … fall within States’ authority to shield children from sexually explicit content. The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. “That power necessarily includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech.”

“The power to verify age is a necessary component of the power to prevent children’s access to content that is obscene from their perspective,” Thomas went on to note, adding that the legislation “falls within Texas’s traditional power to protect minors from speech that is obscene from their perspective.”

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan dissented, alongside Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“For adults cannot be limited to ‘only what is fit for children,’” Kagan wrote in the dissenting opinion. “Their right to view ‘[s]exual expression,’ outside the traditional obscenity category, is ‘protected by the First Amendment,’” she went on to say before charging that Texas’ law “impedes the exercise of that right.”

“It imposes what our First Amendment decisions often call a ‘chilling effect,’” Kagan said of the law.

The Supreme Court’s ruling could clear the way for other states to impose age restrictions on pornographic websites, with 18 states already passing similar legislation.