SCOTUS Needs To Take Up The Texas Age Verification Lawsuit
from the no-brainer dept
I think we could witness one of the most important First Amendment legal showdowns ever.
The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to rule on the constitutionality of mandatory age verification for porn websites. If the high court takes up the case, it would queue up a landmark debate pertaining to the First Amendment and privacy rights of millions of people.
Free Speech Coalition and the parent companies of the largest adult entertainment websites on the web filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas with the intention to block House Bill (HB) 1181.
HB 1181 requires mandatory age verification for porn websites with users from Texas IP addresses. It also requires pseudoscientific health warnings to be posted on adult websites. Counsel representing the coalition and the porn companies argued that it violated the First Amendment rights of consumers and owners of the websites. This prompted the federal district court to initially enjoin the state of Texas from enforcing the law because its text appeared to be unconstitutional.
Acting Texas Attorney General Angela Colmenero appealed the injunction to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. After a clear demonstration of classic Fifth Circuit tap dancing and the return of Ken Paxton to helm of the Attorney General’s office, Texas was granted permission to enforce the age verification requirements outlined in the law. Luckily, the circuit judges properly applied the Zauderer standard, denying the requirement to post the bogus health warnings.
Soon after this, Paxton announced lawsuits against the parent companies of Pornhub, xHamster, and Stripchat for violations of HB 1181. The penalties total in millions of dollars in damages, per the law. After the lawsuits for HB 1181 violations were announced and filed in circuit courts in Travis County, counsel for the plaintiffs tried to hold enforcement while they petitioned the high court to take up the case for consideration. Justice Samuel Alito, the circuit justice for the Fifth Circuit, has yet to indicate that the case will be taken up by the Supreme Court. There is no reason why they shouldn’t take it up because of how important this case is moving forward, and how this issue is showing up in so many other states.
The case, Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton, is so important that the national affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union announced they are aiding the plaintiffs and their current counsel, a team from the big law firm Quinn Emanuel, in their case. They will support the petition for writ of certiorari, potential oral arguments, etc. to render House Bill 1181 and all age verification laws as unconstitutional pipedreams.
Plaintiffs accurately argue that this is settled law, referring to the high court’s landmark decision in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union. This decision found that segregating the content of the internet by age violates the rights of not only adults but for minors. The vast majority of age verification laws as they are structured now do just that.
While the Supreme Court provided for a less restrictive means to filter out minors from viewing age-restricted materials and potentially facing some level of harm, the vehicles of enforcement and some of the options touted in these bills for controlling minors’ web usage are, to the plaintiffs and civil liberties organizations, a violation of the First Amendment. ACLU and Quinn Emanuel attorneys for the plaintiffs present these arguments in their petition for writ of certiorari, which was filed in April 2024. Now, we just need the Supreme Court to take this seriously and not let the Fifth Circuit, the circuit that upheld a ban on drag shows, dictate law for the nation.
Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, age verification, hb 1181, ken paxton, samuel alito, supreme court, texas
Companies: aclu, free speech coalition
Comments on “SCOTUS Needs To Take Up The Texas Age Verification Lawsuit”
Porn hub should add verification in, in Texas but require it be done with a gun license and to list out what guns are owned.
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We need to eliminate Republicans from public life in America, guys.
They’re never going to stop attacking our freedoms and trying to turn this country into a Christian Theocracy.
Re:
As a reminder, this problem isn’t limited to Pornhub and other hardcore porn websites, if this is constitutional (with how the 5th circuit ruled), this could be applied to any website with any content that is found to be “harmful to minors” but free speech for adults, and that standard isn’t limited to hardcore porn. This would both lead to a ton of websites needing to use invasive age verification and others censoring all content that could potentially cause an issue to avoid needing it.
Most of these laws thus far have use a 1/3rd standard (aside from the 1/4th used by Kansas), but a constitutional question would address any such content hosted by websites.
Re: Re:
Foot in the door.
Millions of people??
Everyone.
Either the good or BAD would fully affect EVERYONE. as its supposed to.
WE do have a few laws out there, but NONE ENFORCED. AND no one knows WHO is to enforce them.
And the line in Social sec, about NOT using the number for ID PURPOSES?? I think was removed.
I do have to suggest tho. That with random calls,
1. a Human
2. They know who they are talking to, wiht me not telling them.
3. they are willing to give me a callback number. AND I USE IT, to call them back.
Who has heard about Medicaid and the STRANGENESS?? And getting MANY phone calls about more medical. even tho Medicaid is being shot in the foot.
“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the BombCommunism”Supreme Court will ignore
I believe if it was social media age verification the US Supreme Court will take this case up, HOWEVER this is porn. Most people would like a way to age verify the porn. Reality is porn sites need to create a way to verify their users age. However the company doing this has to be responsible. Now social media is a different story. Not everything is bad on Social Media plus the question remains what is social media. Prediction Supreme Court will ignore the porn verification but the social media verification they will take up
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They would need to take up both of them.
Re:
Your face if bad is fascist piece of shit, we should have age verification for you.
Reality is, that if you don’t like it, no one is forcing you to look at it. Go crawl down your fucking hole in the sand where none of us have to see you stuffing your head in your ass.
Re:
So: “Nerd harder.” Magic doesn’t exist in the real world, no matter how hard the nerds nerd.
Age verification means people giving up privacy, minors giving up privacy, stored in databases that can and will be hacked, stored by or for the sites that the vocal minority have the serious problems with. It will also be gamed and bypassed.
None of this makes sense.
Re:
I got age verified at age fourteen by using my dad’s credit card. Your point?
Imagine if they managed to remind those paying the bills that their job is to set rules & punishments for their crotch goblins not tech companies.
They go on and on about how porn is bad, then we see the per state search terms & we know they are lying.
In a nation where children are being turned over to debt collectors over school lunch debt, they are focused on the imaginary harms if kids see naughty bits online.
These moral assholes aren’t moral, they are just demanding we all follow their beliefs & surrender our rights to them. They get caught lying, cheating, stealing and people keep electing them because they promise to stop all of these horrible immoral things.
Its not teh gays, the furries, the transpeople, teh pron, that ruined the nation… it is 1 religious group that is held above all others & given special powers & rights to demand everyone else have to allow them to be assholes with legal protections well above other citizens.
Besides if SCOTUS takes this up we can finally answer the question about how fucking corrupt they really are.
INFORMATION
They want INFORMATION. You are Number Six…
Don't agree, but...
…if we have age verification at all, put it on the device and users accounts on the device, not all sites. Now it is the parents responsibility, as it should be.
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It doesn’t matter, it’s pretty much unsafe at any speed.
What a quandary to be an American. Do we obey the arcane document that’s two hundred years old, or the one that’s two THOUSAND? Of course, it’s a given that we’ll cherry pick the parts that fit our agenda while ignoring the rest. Such is the way of our species.
I submit that we’re overdue for some new guidelines. Technology has progressed significantly since either document was created, after all.
We could just boil it all down to one maxim, if you ask me.
Matthew 7:12.
Everyone seems to have forgotten about it.
Age verification doesn't work
A small digression away from the constitutional issues…
Age verification doesn’t work. You can still easily find porn with a simple google search. The larger, more established porn sites will abide by the law, but there will always be smaller sites that won’t or can’t abide. They will be too small and too numerous to be noticed by any state enforcement agency. Among those smaller sites will be malware and extreme porn sites. Age verification law will be sending porn viewers to these more dangerous sites.
Additionally, the age verification sites will create a database of porn viewers. Only a matter of time until one of these sites is hacked ala AshleyMadison. Nothing like knowing that most of the male teachers in the elementary school along with the head of the pta signed up for age verification so they could watch porn. That shouldn’t be scandalous, we all watch porn, but it will be because we don’t acknowledge it.