Supreme Court upholds Texas' age verification law for porn sites [View all]
Source: USA Today
June 27, 2025, 11:17 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 27 upheld a Texas law requiring pornographic websites verify users are at least 18, in a case that pitted concerns about protecting minors against worries about violating the First Amendment rights of adults. The court split 6-3 along ideologically grounds with the three liberal justices dissenting.
Eighteen other, largely conservative states have enacted similar laws in recent years as access to a growing cache of online pornography has exploded and the material has become more graphic.
Free speech advocates and a trade group representing the adult entertainment industry said requiring users to upload a government ID or use another approved method to verify age makes them vulnerable to their personal information being hacked, leaked or inadvertently disclosed. They said content filtering technology can stop kids from viewing porn without infringing onthe privacy rights of adults.
Texas countered that content filtering technology for parents has been available for decades and hasn’t worked, an argument that struck home with some of the justices when they debated the Free Speech Coalition v Paxton in January. “Content filtering for all those devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children, the oldest of which was born in 2001.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/27/supreme-court-decision-porn-website-age-verification-texas/84379183007/
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1122_3e04.pdf
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