Latest news with #ElenaKagan
The Guardian
an hour 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.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Liberal supreme court justices' dissents reveal concerns that the US faces a crisis
On Friday the conservative-dominated US supreme court handed down a series of important judgements on issues ranging from the power of the judiciary to religious rights in schools. Media attention generally focused on the wording of the rulings and their impact. But the court's liberal minority of just three justices penned dissenting opinions that were similarly potent, revealing the sharp divisions on America's top legal body and also showed their deep concern at the declining health of American civic society and the authoritarian bent of the Trump presidency. Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered an acidic sermon against the court's 6-3 decision to end lower courts' practice of issuing nationwide injunctions to block federal executive orders, reading her dissent directly from the bench in a move meant to highlight its importance. The decision is seen as limiting the power of judges to halt or slow presidential orders, even those whose constitutionality has not yet been tested, such as Trump's attempt to remove the right of automatic US citizenship to anyone born inside US borders. 'No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,' states Sotomayor's dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson. 'Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.' As opinion season ends in the first months of Donald Trump's second presidency, the high court's decisions have expanded the power of the presidency and limited the power of lower courts to block Trump's agenda. The opinion in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v Casa Inc, in which the court was silent on the underlying question about the constitutionality of Trump's executive order, nonetheless undermines the rule of law, Sotomayor said. Even though defending the order's legality is 'an impossible task' given the plain language of the 14th amendment, the court's opinion means each person must challenge the order individually in states that are not a party to the suit, unless class action status is granted. In a concurring dissent, Jackson explained the burden it places on people to defend their rights in court. 'Today's ruling allows the Executive to deny people rights that the Founders plainly wrote into our Constitution, so long as those individuals have not found a lawyer or asked a court in a particular manner to have their rights protected,' Jackson's dissent states. 'This perverse burden shifting cannot coexist with the rule of law. In essence, the Court has now shoved lower court judges out of the way in cases where executive action is challenged, and has gifted the Executive with the prerogative of sometimes disregarding the law.' Jackson added ominously, the ruling was an 'existential threat to the rule of law'. Reading from the bench has historically been an uncommon act meant to emphasize profound disapproval of a justice to a ruling. The court's liberal wing has made it less rare lately, inveighing against profound legal changes wrought by the court's six-judge conservative bloc. Other decisions handed down today also permit parents to opt their children out of classroom activities that depict LGBTQ+ characters in books (Mahmood v Taylor), and allow states to require age verification on pornographic web sites (Free Speech Coalition Inc, v Paxton), both decided on ideological lines. Age verification has already begun to drive porn website operators out of Texas, given a cost estimated at $40,000 for every 100,000 verifications, Kagan noted in her acerbic dissent. The Texas law creates a barrier between adults and first amendment-protected content that previous Supreme Court decisions on speech would not have permitted, she noted. Providing ID online is fundamentally different than flashing a driver's license at a bar. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion 'It is turning over information about yourself and your viewing habits – respecting speech many find repulsive – to a website operator, and then to … who knows?' she wrote. 'The operator might sell the information; the operator might be hacked or subpoenaed.' The ruling granting a religious exemption will have a chilling effect on schools, which may strip classroom material of any reference to LGBTQ+ content rather than risk costly litigation, Sotomayor wrote in dissent. Her dissent highlights the deliberate work done by the Montgomery County School Board to create an inclusive curriculum, adding 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding' to its library in 2022. The children's book, one of five with LGBTQ characters, describes a same-sex couple's wedding announcement and plans. 'Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent's religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,' she wrote. 'The Court's ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards.' In three of the five decisions handed down today, that conservative bloc had the majority. But in two cases the conservative bloc split: Kennedy v Braidwood Management, which reversed lower court rulings that declared an appointed board overseeing preventative care under the Affordable Care Act as an unconstitutional, and FCC v Consumers' Research, which upheld the constitutionality of fees collected for a rural broadband program. Each of these cases split conservatives between those who support more expansive executive power – Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett – and others at war with the administrative state: Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas. But collectively, conservatives on the court have continued to upend longstanding precedent, while weakening the legal avenues of challengers to use the courts to defend their rights, the court's remaining liberal justices lament. 'The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival,' Sotomayor wrote in dissent on the birthright citizenship case. 'Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort.'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Supreme Court turns aside conservative challenge to $8 billion phone and internet subsidy program
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on June 27 upheld an $8 billion federal program that subsidizes high-speed internet and phone service for millions of Americans, rejecting a conservative argument that the program is funded by an unconstitutional tax. The case raised questions about how much Congress can 'delegate' its legislative authority to a federal agency and whether the Supreme Court should tighten that standard. In a 6-3 decision, the court said Congress set clear guidance on how the program should work. "For nearly three decades, the work of Congress and the (Federal Communications) Commission in establishing universal-service programs has led to a more fully connected country," Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority. "And it has done so while leaving fully intact the separation of powers integral to our Constitution." Three of the court's six conservatives dissented. Justice Neil Gorsuch said the majority wrongly concluded that an executive agency can decide for itself what taxes to impose, a power only Congress has. "The framers divided power among legislative, executive, and judicial branches not out of desire for formal tidiness, but to ensure ours would indeed be a Nation ruled by `We the People,'" Gorsuch wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Under a law Congress passed in 1996, telecommunications companies are charged a Universal Service Fund fee – passed on to customers − that boosts phone and internet service to households and hospitals in rural areas, to low-income families, and to public schools and libraries. A private administrator overseen by the Federal Communications Commission distributes the funding, collects the fees and estimates how much needs to be raised each quarter. The FCC must approve the estimate before it's used to determine fees for each carrier. The conservative group Consumers' Research, a carrier and a group of consumers challenged this setup, which has been the law for nearly three decades, asserting it's Congress, not the FCC – and certainly not a private entity − that must determine the fee level. "At its heart, this case is about taxation without representation," Trent McCotter, an attorney for the group, told the Supreme Court in March. 'The amount of public revenue to raise is a quintessential legislative determination, not some minor detail to be filled in later.' While appeals courts in Ohio and Georgia rejected those arguments, the Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the universal service fee unconstitutional. The challenge was part of a conservative effort to curb the 'administrative state' that has often been successful at the high court. But Paul Clement, who served as solicitor general under former President George W. Bush − a Republican − represented a trade association for the telecommunications industry defending the program. He told the justices this was not the right case to revamp Supreme Court decisions that had set a low bar for the non-delegation rule. 'We all benefit from having a communications system that is truly universal,' Clement said. 'I may not live in rural Alaska, but it's nice to be able to place a call there.' And the Justice Department warned that declaring the funding scheme unconstitutional would jeopardize many other programs. The telecommunications law, according to the department, follows the same delegation framework Congress has used in a range of areas, including to prevent unfair competition, oversee the securities industry, ensure the safety of food and drugs, regulate labor relations and set air-quality standards. Gus Hurwitz, senior fellow at the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said he's not surprised the challenge failed. He called it an aggressive attempt to get the court to stop Congress from delegating power to the executive branch. But the justices have been addressing that concern in other ways, Hurwitz said, including through its "major questions doctrine" ruling that agencies should have less power to act unless there's clear congressional approval. The lead case of the two that were consolidated for arguments is Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers' Research. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court upholds Universal Service Fund for internet, phone
Politico
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Politico
Obamacare decision makes way for debate on what's preventive
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the constitutionality of a multibillion-dollar fund used to expand telephone and broadband services. The 6-3 ruling is a victory for the Federal Communications Commission, which operates the pot of money in question, known as the Universal Service Fund. It's also a rare win at the Supreme Court for agency power, as the court's conservative majority — which is often skeptical of independent agencies — passed up an opportunity to further weaken the administrative state. Three liberal justices and three conservatives formed the court's majority. Three other conservatives dissented. The money in the Universal Service Fund comes from charges collected from telephone providers through a surcharge on customers' bills. It is used for a mix of internet connectivity subsidy programs that help schools, libraries, low-income households and internet providers in rural areas. In upholding the fund, the justices rejected a bid by some legal conservatives to weaken the administrative state by reviving a controversial theory known as the 'nondelegation doctrine.' Under that doctrine, Congress has extremely limited authority to delegate policymaking decisions to executive branch agencies. 'For nearly three decades, the work of Congress and the Commission in establishing universal-service programs has led to a more fully connected country. And it has done so while leaving fully intact the separation of powers integral to our Constitution,' Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion. The three justices often considered the court's most conservative members, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented. Writing for the dissenters, Gorsuch said the court effectively rewrote the law in order to deem it constitutional. 'We wind up in much the same place, only now with judges, rather than Presidents or bureaucrats, making our laws,' he wrote. Proponents of the nondelegation doctrine argued that Congress handed away too much power when it instructed the FCC to determine how much money to collect for the Universal Service Fund. And, they say, the FCC in turn handed away too much power when the agency established a private corporation to help administer the fund. In essence, the challengers argued, the fund represents an unconstitutional tax. If the Supreme Court had fully accepted those arguments and endorsed an aggressive view of nondelegation, experts say it would have imperiled numerous programs across federal agencies. But the high court, in a 6-3 vote, said the FCC setup didn't violate the nondelegation doctrine. 'Consumers' Research contends that the Act gives the FCC boundless authority, but the provisions it points to show nothing of the kind,' Kagan wrote for the majority, referring to the conservative nonprofit group that brought the case. 'The test Consumers' Research proposes also would throw a host of federal statutes into doubt, as Congress has often empowered agencies to raise revenue without specifying a numeric cap or tax rate.' The justices' ruling will be a relief for the many telecom players who felt threatened by the case. Supporters of the fund have long warned that a decision striking it down could put millions of beneficiaries at risk. The loss could have squeezed households particularly with lower incomes and in rural areas, where cutting off the aid could have driven up internet prices right as households lost a monthly subsidy helping them pay for it.
E&E News
4 hours ago
- Politics
- E&E News
Supreme Court declines to further sap agencies' authority
The Supreme Court on Friday sidestepped reviving a legal doctrine limiting the power lawmakers can give to federal regulators, delivering relief to environmentalists and others who had feared the case would be used to further shackle federal agencies like EPA from addressing issues like climate change. In a 6-3 decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers' Research, the court agreed to uphold a telecommunications service fee that supports phone and internet services for rural and low-income communities. But the court opted not to revive the nearly century-old nondelegation doctrine, with Justice Elena Kagan writing for the majority that 'under our nondelegation precedents, Congress sufficiently guided and constrained the discretion that it lodged with the FCC.' Advertisement 'Today's decision rejected a revival of the nondelegation doctrine — at least for now,' said Andrew Twinamatsiko, director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the O'Neill Institute at Georgetown Law. 'But challenges to agency authority will still be an issue to watch.'
