US Supreme Court weighs Texas age-check for porn sites

The US Supreme Court hears a challenge Wednesday to a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify visitors' ages, part of a growing effort to limit access by minors to online sexual content.

Texas is one of nearly 20 states to institute such a requirement, which critics argue violates First Amendment free speech rights.

The Texas law was passed in 2023 by the state's Republican-majority legislature but was initially blocked after a challenge by an adult entertainment industry trade association.

A federal district court sided with the trade group, the Free Speech Coalition, saying it restricted access by adults to constitutionally protected content.

But a conservative-dominated appeals court later upheld the age verification requirement, prompting the pornography industry trade group to take its case to the Supreme Court, where conservatives have a 6-3 supermajority.

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"Texas has thrown up its hands and imposed a blunt age-verification mandate that burdens massive numbers of adults seeking to access constitutionally protected speech," the Free Speech Coalition said in a brief to the Supreme Court.

"By verifying information through government identification, the law will allow the government to peer into the most intimate and personal aspects of people's lives," it said.

The Free Speech Coalition noted that Texas, in defending the bill, known as HB 1811, had pointed to laws requiring proof of age to buy wine or rent a car.

But the privacy and security concerns involved in those transactions are different, the group said, and unlike accessing sexual content online "most people would not be overly troubled to be linked to a car rental or wine purchase."

HB 1811 would have a "substantial chilling effect," it said, and carries the risk of "disclosures, leaks, or hacks" that could "reveal intimate desires and preferences," including to the state.

- Public health crisis -

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in his brief to the Supreme Court, insisted that there is nothing unconstitutional about the law requiring websites with pornographic content to verify that their users are over 18 years of age.

Access by children through smartphones and other devices to an "avalanche of misogynistic and often violent smut" is creating a public health crisis, Paxton argued.

"HB 1181 does not prevent adults from viewing pornography," he said. "Instead, it requires online pornographers to take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that their customers are not children."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit civil liberties organization, was among the interested parties filing briefs in the case and urged the Supreme Court to strike down the law.

"Online age verification is far more privacy invasive," the EFF said, than an identification check at a store.

"The momentary in-person ID check does not require adults to upload data-rich, government-issued identifying documents," it said, "thereby creating a potentially lasting record of their visit to the establishment."

"Texas' age-verification law will rob people of anonymity, discourage access by privacy- and security minded users, and block some individuals entirely from online access to adult content that remains fully protected by the First Amendment," the EFF said.

France also recently mandated age verification on some porn sites, but with a requirement that platforms offer at least one "double blind" option for users to prove their age without revealing their identity.