Latest news with #ClarenceThomas
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Business Standard
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
US Supreme Court upholds Texas law to shield kids from online pornography
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law aimed at blocking children from seeing online pornography. Nearly half of the states have passed similar laws requiring adult websites users verify users' ages to access pornographic material. The laws come as smartphones and other devices make it easier to access online porn, including hardcore obscene material. The court split along ideological lines in the 6-3 ruling. It's a loss for an adult-entertainment industry trade group called the Free Speech Coalition, which challenged the Texas law. Th majority opinion, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, found the measure didn't seriously restrict adults' free-speech rights. Adults have the right to access speech obscene only to minors ... but adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification, he wrote. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the court should have used a higher legal standard in weighing whether the law creates free-speech problems. Pornhub, one of the world's busiest websites, has stopped operating in several states, including Texas, citing the technical and privacy hurdles in complying with the laws. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, celebrated the ruling. Companies have no right to expose children to pornography and must institute reasonable age verification measures, he said. The decision could pave the way for more states to adopt similar laws, the group National Center on Sexual Exploitation said. While the Free Speech Coalition agreed that children shouldn't be seeing porn, it said the law puts an unfair free-speech burden on adults by requiring them to submit personal information that could be vulnerable to hacking or tracking. The age verification requirements fall on websites that have a certain amount of sexual material, not search engines or social-media sites that can be used to find it. Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, said that age verification requirements raise serious privacy and free-expression concerns. The court's decision overturns decades of precedent and has the potential to upend access to First Amendment-protected speech on the internet for everyone, children and adults alike. In 1996, the Supreme Court struck down parts of a law banning explicit material viewable by kids online. A divided court also ruled against a different federal law aimed at stopping kids from being exposed to porn in 2004 but said less restrictive measures like content filtering are constitutional. Texas argues that technology has improved significantly in the last 20 years, allowing online platforms to easily check users' ages with a quick picture. Those requirements are more like ID checks at brick-and-mortar adult stores that were upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, the state said. District courts initially blocked laws in Indiana and Tennessee as well as Texas, but appeals courts reversed the decisions and let the laws take effect.
Yomiuri Shimbun
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Supreme Court Upholds Texas Law Aimed at Blocking Kids from Seeing Pornography Online
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law aimed at blocking children from seeing online pornography. Nearly half of the states have passed similar laws requiring adult website users to verify their ages to access pornographic material. The laws come as smartphones and other devices make it easier to access online porn, including hardcore obscene material. The court split along ideological lines in the 6-3 ruling. It's a loss for an adult-entertainment industry trade group called the Free Speech Coalition, which challenged the Texas law. Th majority opinion, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, found the measure didn't seriously restrict adults' free-speech rights. 'Adults have the right to access speech obscene only to minors … but adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification,' he wrote. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the court should have used a higher legal standard in weighing whether the law creates free-speech problems for adults. 'I would demand Texas show more, to ensure it is not undervaluing the interest in free expression,' she wrote. Pornhub, one of the world's busiest websites, has stopped operating in several states, including Texas, citing the technical and privacy hurdles in complying with the laws. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, celebrated the ruling. 'Companies have no right to expose children to pornography and must institute reasonable age verification measures,' he said. The decision could pave the way for more states to adopt similar laws as one of several steps to prevent children from being exposed to pornography, the group National Center on Sexual Exploitation said. While the Free Speech Coalition agreed that children shouldn't be seeing porn, it said the law puts an unfair free-speech burden on adults by requiring them to submit personal information that could be vulnerable to hacking or tracking. Alison Boden, its executive director, called the ruling disastrous. She said that minors have already found ways to find sexual content online despite the law and its 'massive chilling effect on adults.' The age verification requirements fall on websites that have a certain amount of sexual material, rather than search engines or social-media sites that can be used to find it. Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, said that age verification requirements raise serious privacy and free-expression concerns. The court's decision 'overturns decades of precedent and has the potential to upend access to First Amendment-protected speech on the internet for everyone, children and adults alike.' In 1996, the Supreme Court struck down parts of a law banning explicit material viewable by kids online. A divided court also ruled against a different federal law aimed at stopping kids from being exposed to porn in 2004 but said less restrictive measures like content filtering are constitutional. Texas argues that technology has improved significantly in the last 20 years, allowing online platforms to easily check users' ages with a quick picture. Those requirements are more like ID checks at brick-and-mortar adult stores that were upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, the state said. District courts initially blocked laws in Indiana and Tennessee as well as Texas, but appeals courts reversed the decisions and let the laws take effect. 'There has to be a gatekeeper somewhere when it comes to exposure,' said Rania Mankarious, a mother of three and CEO of Crime Stoppers of Houston. 'While nothing is full proof, we're thankful to see something be done.'
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
US supreme court backs age checks for pornography sites to exclude children
The US supreme court ruled that a Texas law requiring that pornography websites verify the ages of their visitors was constitutional on Friday, the latest development in a global debate over how to prevent minors from accessing adult material online. 'HB 1181 simply requires adults to verify their age before they can access speech that is obscene to children,' Clarence Thomas wrote in the court's 6-3 majority opinion. 'The statute advances the state's important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.' Elena Kagan dissented alongside the court's two other liberal justices. The Texas law required would-be visitors to sites purveying 'sexual material harmful to minors' to submit personally identifying information to verify their ages and determine they were 18, of age to access a page with more than a third pornographic content, per the law's standard. The Free Speech Coalition, a trade group representing adult entertainment professionals and companies, including and had sued the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton. The coalition argued that the mandate unfairly hindered the constitutional right of consenting adults to access constitutionally protected explicit material and exposed the sites themselves to privacy risks by foisting the burden of verification on them. The court heard arguments in Free Speech Coalition Inc v Paxton in January. After two hours of oral arguments, the justices appeared divided over the law's constitutionality. A federal appeals court had previously cleared the way for the law, lifting a lower court's injunction. The federal judge in the case had said the law furthered the US government's legitimate interest in preventing minors from viewing pornography. On Friday, the supreme court affirmed that decision. The ruling sets a precedent for the two dozen states in the US that have passed age verification laws. Pornhub, widely estimated to be the most-visited site for pornographic content in the world, has made itself unavailable in 17 of them. Texas, the second-most-populous state in the US with 31 million people, is the highest-profile example. The state legislature passed a law requiring the submission of identifying information to visit Pornhub and other adult sites in September 2023. In March of the following year, the site went dark in the state, greeting would-be visitors with a banner calling the law 'ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous'. It remains unavailable today. In Louisiana, which has also imposed age verification laws, Pornhub is still available, but it has seen traffic there decline by 80%, which the company attributes to the barrier of the ID requirement. Research into age-gate statutes in the US has found that they are not effective in their stated goal. Online search data showed that people in states with age verification laws sought out porn sites that did not comply with local laws so as to circumvent the age gates as well as virtual private networks to hide their locations from internet providers. Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, has argued in favor of content-filtering software or on-device age verification, in which a phone maker such as Apple or Samsung would determine a user's age and pass that information to the websites a person visits, rather than forcing the site itself to obtain and host the information. Aylo's suite of sites returned to France last week after a three-week blackout, a protest against an age verification law there. An administrative court suspended the law while it reviewed compliance with European Union regulations. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion The UK is likely to be the next front in the fight over age verification. Pornhub and other pornography websites have promised to implement age checks there in compliance with the Online Safety Act, which requires 'robust' age-checking methods be put in place this summer.
Los Angeles Times
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Supreme Court doesn't rule on Louisiana's second majority Black congressional district
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall. The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court's conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act. The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life. Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a brief dissent from Friday's order that he would have decided the case now and imposed limits on 'race-based redistricting.' The order keeps alive a fight over political power stemming from the 2020 census halfway to the next one. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court intervened twice. Last year, the justices ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 elections, while the legal case proceeded. The call for new arguments probably means that the district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields probably will remain intact for the 2026 elections because the high court has separately been reluctant to upend districts as elections draw near. The state has changed its election process to replace its so-called jungle primary with partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees. The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026. The state's Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state in which Black people make up a third of the population. Civil rights advocates won a lower-court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters. The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges. The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map. The state complied and drew a new map, with two Black majority districts. But white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts that race was the predominant factor driving the new map. A three-judge court agreed. Louisiana appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.
Newsweek
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Clarence Thomas Wants Supreme Court to Reassess Landmark Voting Law
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissent to the Court's order to postpone a case pertaining to redistricting in Louisiana until next term, with the conservative justice highlighting the need for a "systematic reassessment of our interpretation" of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Newsweek has reached out to several legal scholars for comment via email on Friday. Why It Matters The Supreme Court, on its final day of issuing opinions for this term, said it would reargue the case, Louisiana v. Callais, concerned with congressional redistricting, next term. The Court will issue an order scheduling argument and "specifying any additional questions to be addressed in a supplemental briefing." The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed at the height of the civil rights movement, is a landmark legislation aimed at preventing racial discrimination in voting. Congressional redistricting plays a critical role in shaping the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Republicans currently hold 220 seats, while Democrats have 212. What To Know The case is concerned with the legality of the creation of a Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana, with a group having sued that it was illegal racial gerrymandering. Black residents make up nearly one-third of Louisiana's population, accounting for 32.6 percent, according to 2024 Census data. After the 2020 Census, the state legislature redrew its congressional map, maintaining just one majority-Black district out of six. The majority-GOP legislature later approved a new map that added a second majority-Black district, which is now at the center of the legal challenge. On Friday, Clarence issued a dissenting opinion to the decision to reargue, writing, "Congress requires this Court to exercise jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to congressional redistricting, and we accordingly have an obligation to resolve such challenges promptly." Further into his dissent, he reiterated his belief that this case should have been decided this term, stating, "these are the only cases argued this Term in which our jurisdiction is mandatory." U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas appears before swearing in Pam Bondi as U.S. Attorney General in the Oval Office at the White House on February 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas appears before swearing in Pam Bondi as U.S. Attorney General in the Oval Office at the White House on February 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo byHe says that the case highlights the "intractable conflict between the Court's interpretation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 52 U. S. C. §10301, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution." Section 2 of the VRA prohibits voting practices that are racially discriminatory. Thomas pointed to conflicts between the VRA and the Constitution in redistricting processes. He concluded his dissent, reiterating his longstanding position, writing, "For over three decades, I have called for 'a systematic reassessment of our interpretation of §2.'" "I am hopeful that this Court will soon realize that the conflict its §2 jurisprudence has sown with the Constitution is too severe to ignore," he added. What People Are Saying Cecillia Wang, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, told Newsweek in a Friday email statement: "Before this case ever began, we had already won a hard-fought legal battle, proving that the legislature's initial map, like Louisiana's maps for generations before, illegally diluted Black voters' political power. Thanks to the Supreme Court's order from May of 2024, which put the district court's injunction on hold, the fair and legal map the Louisiana legislature enacted in response to our litigation remains in place while the case continues next year. We will be back next term to once again defend the new map and the representation Black voters deserve." Rick Pildes, a law professor at New York University Law School, wrote in an X, formerly Twitter, post: "Big news about race and redistricting: The Supreme Court has decided to reargue the Louisiana case next Term. Will likely open up bigger issues." Representative Troy Carter, a Louisiana Democrat, said in an X post: "The Supreme Court's decision to rehear the case on Louisiana's congressional maps is a disappointing but not unfamiliar step in the long struggle for fair representation. While the Court did not overturn the map today, its refusal to resolve the issue only prolongs uncertainty." His official statement reads: "Let me be clear: the map currently in place reflects the demographic reality of our state and the legal mandates of the Voting Rights map adopted by the legislature was a product of bipartisan negotiation, judicial review, and compliance with federal law. It is not racial gerrymander--it is a remedial measure responding to decades of underrepresentation." What Happens Next The Supreme Court is scheduled to resume its term in October.
