If you try to visit PornHub, one of the world’s largest websites from any of the 17 U.S. states, you’ll be blocked. Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo Holdings, has restricted a number of laws to restrict access.
On Friday, a landscape of online privacy and freedom of speech that could be reshaped in the 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court went all out to uphold Texas’s Age Verification Act (one of the first books passed in the country) which many websites publish pornography to check if all visitors are over 18 years old. Place an age verification system, plus an additional fine of up to $250,000. It also noted that the website should display health warnings about the potential health risks of pornography.
Justice Clarence Thomas said that since the law “requires only the age proof of obscene content in minors, it cannot directly regulate the protected speech of adults,” added that “adults have no right to avoid the First Amendment to age verification.”
Judge Elena Kagan argued in objection that Texas law is direct and unconstitutional burden on the protected speech of adults. “A state may not care much about protecting adults’ access to sexually clear speeches; a country even prefers to cut those materials for everyone, but the First Amendment protects these sexually clear materials for every adult,” she wrote.
The ruling marked a major victory for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defended the law amid strong opposition from digital rights groups and adult entertainment industries.
Texas lawmakers passed HB1181 in early 2023, but were removed from the U.S. District Court for the Western Region because the law could be unconstitutional before the law takes effect. Adult Industry Group Free Speech Alliance, among other speech alliances, violated First Amendment’s reasons for restricting adults’ access to constitutional protection, challenged Texas laws. Last March, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas law, and the Speech Alliance brought the case to the Supreme Court at a January hearing.
In recent years, states across the country have proposed a wave of age verification laws. More than half of the U.S. states have passed or tried to pass the age verification law, according to a tracker released by the Free Speech Alliance.
“Efforts to regulate online porn are often an action to review the wider campaign to review the internet,” Jess Miers, a visiting assistant professor at the Law School of the University of Akron, said before the decision. “While the focus of this case is on mandatory age verification of adult content, state lawmakers want it to impose a legal basis for the full limit on broad online material.”
