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The Guardian
5 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.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Elena Kagan Torches Supreme Court's Terrible Logic in Porn Ruling
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan ripped the court's majority decision Friday upholding age-verification requirements for pornography websites. In a scathing dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson, Kagan accused the majority decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton of diluting First Amendment protections for sexually explicit speech. 'The majority's opinion concluding to the contrary is, to be frank, confused. The opinion, to start with, is at war with itself,' she wrote, because the majority opinion initially claims that age verification had nothing to do with the First Amendment, before ultimately it 'gives up that ghost.' Kagan argued that the Texas law requiring websites that host pornography or other sexually explicit materials to verify their users' ages before allowing them access had restricted the access adults have to protected speech. While the rule was designed to prohibit minors from accessing explicit materials, many adults would likely be unwilling to hand over their personal information, such as a passport, to websites hosting pornography. Kagan explained that the rule called for a higher level of scrutiny because it was not simply 'incidentally' restrictive, as Justice Clarence Thomas—who wrote the majority opinion—claimed. 'Texas's law defines speech by content and tells people entitled to view that speech that they must incur a cost to do so. That is, under our First Amendment law, a direct (not incidental) regulation of speech based on its content—which demands strict scrutiny,' she wrote. Under intermediate scrutiny, Texas was not required to demonstrate that it had selected the option that was least restrictive for free speech. Kagan argued that this was not sufficient. 'A State may not care much about safeguarding adults' access to sexually explicit speech; a State may even prefer to curtail those materials for everyone. Many reasonable people, after all, view the speech at issue here as ugly and harmful for any audience. But the First Amendment protects those sexually explicit materials, for every adult. So a State cannot target that expression, as Texas has here, any more than is necessary to prevent it from reaching children,' she wrote. 'That is what we have held in cases indistinguishable from this one. And that is what foundational First Amendment principles demand.'
Fox News
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Supreme Court upholds Texas law requiring age verification on porn websites
Print Close By Alexandra Koch Published June 27, 2025 The Supreme Court of the United States on Friday upheld a Texas law requiring pornography websites to verify visitors' ages to protect minors from sexually explicit content online. Justices ruled 6-3 that requiring adults in Texas to verify their age does not violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, noting at least 21 other states imposed similar regulations on sexual material that could be harmful to minors online. Texas and other states prohibit the distribution of sexually explicit content to children in brick and mortar stores, but online content remains largely unregulated. 'WE WON': SOCIAL MEDIA ERUPTS OVER SCOTUS RULING DEALING 'FATAL BLOW' TO TRANSGENDER SURGERIES ON MINORS Lawmakers from the Lone Star State enacted a bill requiring certain commercial websites that publish sexually explicit content to verify the ages of those entering the site, which the justices upheld as constitutional, noting at least 21 other states imposed similar regulations on sexual material that could be harmful to minors. Those who visit sexually explicit websites will need to use government-issued identification or a "commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data." Sites can perform verification themselves or through a third-party service. SCOTUS RULES ON STATE BAN ON GENDER TRANSITION 'TREATMENTS' FOR MINORS IN LANDMARK CASE If website owners knowingly violate the law, the Supreme Court ruled the Texas attorney general can sue and collect a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per day that the site is non-compliant. They can also collect an additional penalty of up to $250,000 if any minors accessed the covered sexual material as a result of the violation. TEXAS BILL PUSHES STRICTEST SOCIAL MEDIA BAN FOR MINORS IN THE NATION Justices wrote in their opinion that internet access has drastically changed since 1999, when only two out of five American households had a computer. In 2024, 95 percent of American teens had access to a smartphone, with 93 percent reporting frequent internet use. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan argued speech that is obscene for minors is often not obscene for adults. "So adults have a constitutional right to view the very same speech that a State may prohibit for children," Kagan wrote. "And it is a fact of life—and also of law—that adults and children do not live in hermetically sealed boxes. In preventing children from gaining access to 'obscene for children' speech, States sometimes take measures impeding adults from viewing it too—even though, for adults, it is constitutionally protected expression. "But what if Texas could do better—what if Texas could achieve its interest without so interfering with adults' constitutionally protected rights in viewing the speech H. B. 1181 covers? That is the ultimate question on which the Court and I disagree." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Pornhub and other pornography giants have stopped service in Texas and other states where regulations are in place. Print Close URL
Wall Street Journal
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age Verification Law for Online Porn Content
The Supreme Court said a Texas law requiring certain websites hosting sexual content to verify their viewers' ages is constitutional. In a 6-3 decision, the court upheld the Texas law, one of at least 21 that have passed on the state level in recent years requiring age verification for users seeking to access pornographic content online.
BBC News
9 hours ago
- Politics
- BBC News
US Supreme Court upholds Texas law requiring ID verification for porn sites
The US Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law that requires users accessing pornography sites to verify their age using a government ID or a face 2023 law was challenged by PornHub and other sites that argued the requirement violated constitutional rights to free speech by placing a burden on adults who want to access that has defended the law, saying it was created to limit harm to minors. More than a dozen other states have passed similar the justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines in a decision released on Friday. "The power to require age verification is within a State's authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content," Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the opinion, a two-hour hearing in January, the justices had appeared to agree with Texas that some form of safeguards should be in place to protect minors, but they also expressed concern about trampling on free speech rights. Lawyers for the pornography websites in the case primarily relied on legal precedent in their arguments. They pointed to a 2004 Supreme Court decision, which ruled against an attempt to criminalise content on the internet that may be harmful to also argued that asking users to submit identifying information may inadvertently bar adults from accessing their websites, effectively impeding on their First Amendment rights."Adults who submit, for example, a 'government ID' over the Internet to 'affirmatively identify themselves' understand that they are thereby exposing themselves to 'inadvertent disclosures, leaks, or hacks,'" the adult film industry argued in their legal also expressed concern about whether the law could be used to restrict other kinds of content intended for lawyers, meanwhile, leaned on another legal precedent: a 1968 Supreme Court decision that upheld a New York law barring the sale of pornographic magazines to those who are lawyers argued that the principles of that law have not changed "just because obscenity has moved online". This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the BBC News App. You can also follow @BBCBreaking on X to get the latest alerts.
