The Big Story 

The Supreme Court weighed whether an explosion in online pornography requires repudiating the court’s precedents concerning sexual content. 

© AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The justices heard arguments in a challenge to Texas’s age-verification law for porn websites.

A majority of the justices suggested the concept of an age-verification requirement could survive First Amendment scrutiny even as the court seemed inclined to send the Texas law back to a lower panel to apply a higher standard of review. 

Several of the court’s conservatives asserted that the age verification may be states’ only real option to protect children from adult websites, because the content-filtering methods the court endorsed as an alternative two decades ago are no longer viable.  

“Kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers. Let me just say that content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children. 

“So I think that the explosion of addiction in new online porn has shown that content filtering isn’t working,” she continued. 

“It was very difficult for 15-year-olds, whatever, to get access to the type of thing that is available with a push of a button today. And the nature of the pornography, I think, has also changed in those 35 years,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. 

The law, passed by the Texas Legislature in June 2023, required sites that host adult content to verify that their users are over the age of 18.  

Nearly 20 other states have passed similar laws related to adult content, and age verification has become an increasingly popular option for states seeking to limit young children’s access to social media. 

The Texas law also requires sites to post a warning that pornography is “potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function.” 

Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing the adult entertainment industry, sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in August 2023.

Backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the group has argued the law violates the First Amendment by creating barriers for adults to access websites that feature adult content. 

The trade association insists its lawsuit should follow a line of Supreme Court cases in which the justices have held pornography restrictions to an exacting standard. 

“Texas’s law is even more problematic than its failed federal predecessors,” said Derek Shaffer, Free Speech Coalition’s attorney. 

Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.

Welcome to The Hill’s Technology newsletter, we’re Julia Shapero and Miranda Nazzaro — tracking the latest moves from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley.

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