Supreme Court Says States Can Limit Access To Online Porn
HuffPost
The ruling marks a major change to longstanding First Amendment protections for online pornography.
No ID, no service. That’s the new reality for porn sites in Texas after the Supreme Court upheld a state law requiring age verification to access such sites on Friday.
The 6-3 decision is a major change in First Amendment law as applied to the internet and will likely lead more states to enact similar age verification requirements across the country. Porn sites that do not wish to comply will likely entirely block access in states with age verification laws, as PornHub, the largest online pornography site, did in Texas after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in 2024.
This is the first time the Supreme Court has approved a significant restriction on access to online pornography. Previously, in two separate decisions, the court struck down the restrictions imposed in the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 as unconstitutionally restricting free speech. Those laws, however, swept far more broadly than Texas’ anti-porn law, seeking to restrict access to materials that either included writing or was not pornographic in nature.
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At issue is the 2023 Texas law HB 1181, which seeks to limit minors’ access to porn sites by requiring everyone to provide age verification — meaning proof of identity — in order to access such sites. A district court judge applied strict scrutiny to rule that the law was likely unconstitutional in 2023, but the Fifth Circuit appeals court chose to apply a lower level of scrutiny, rational basis, which requires the government to show that there is a rational connection between the law and a legitimate state interest, to uphold the law.
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