Posted on 01/15/2025 1:55:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a Texas case that could have major ramifications across the country—including, perhaps, the end of anonymity online.
A Texas law requiring people to provide proof of age before viewing online porn comes before the U.S. Supreme Court today. With similar laws already at play in 18 states besides Texas, and other states considering such measures, it's fair to say that the future of online porn in this country depends on what the justices decide in this case.
The Texas law (House Bill 1181) is being challenged by multiple plaintiffs, including the Free Speech Coalition (FSC)—an adult industry trade group that's being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union—and several adult content publishers.
H.B. 1181 "burdens constitutionally protected speech based on its content" and "violates this Court's consistent precedent," a lawyer for the FSC told the court in his opening argument this morning.
"Can age verification ever be constitutional?" Justice Clarence Thomas asked immediately.
"I don't think the Court needs to close the door to that here," but it would need to be narrowly tailored, said the FSC lawyer. He also suggested that content filtering software accessible to parents provided an alternative way to stop minors from seeing online porn.
You are reading Sex & Tech, the newsletter from Elizabeth Nolan Brown on sex, technology, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture. Want more on sex, technology, and the law? Subscribe to Sex & Tech. It's free and you can unsubscribe any time.
Justice Samuel Alito seemed skeptical of the idea that content filtering was a workable option. "Do you know many parents that are more tech-savvy than their 15-year-old kids?" Alito scoffed.
If the problem is simply that parents aren't savvy enough to use content filtering software properly, or don't even know it exists, these are issues that could be resolved by educating and raising awareness among parents.
Yet educating parents wasn't even tried as an alternative, the FSC lawyer pointed out. The state went straight to requiring people to prove they're 18 or older every time they want to access sexually oriented content online.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett protested that content filtering isn't working, because minors can find porn through video game consoles and countless other digital routes these days.
But Barrett's comment inadvertently shows one of the flaws in proposals like the one in Texas, which only apply to online platforms where more than one-third of content is what Texas deems "sexual material harmful to minors." If kids can access porn from countless places online, including on social media platforms and through video games (neither of which would be subject to Texas H.B. 1181), how does requiring everyone who visits a porn website to show ID stop minors from viewing porn?
@mikestabile/X (@mikestabile/X)
"Foreign websites are going to be completely undeterred and unchanged," the FSC lawyer pointed out. And then there are "search engines…social media." Minors can also use virtual private networks to mask their location if they live in a state where age verification is required. "The only way that kids are going to be protected from all those many sources" is through content filtering, he argued.
The FSC lawyer went on to suggest that the Texas law was not merely about preventing minors from viewing pornographic content but also about "a broader antiporn interest in preventing willing adults from accessing this content."
That gets to the crux of this issue. Age-verification laws infringe on the rights of adults to create and access constitutionally protected speech anonymously, under the guise of protecting children. Conservative proponents of such laws have admitted as much. For instance, one of the architects of Project 2025 (a conservative blueprint for the federal government under a second Trump administration) admitted that age-verification laws are a "back door" way to banning porn.
And it's working—Pornhub and its sister sites have begun blocking viewers in Texas and other states that have passed such laws.
But the issue goes beyond Pornhub and websites like it. Once you start establishing that the government can age-gate perfectly legal online content and burden adult privacy online in the name of protecting children, it's easy to extend this logic to all sorts of things that regulators think minors would be better off without, including access to social media, private web forums, chat apps, websites that provide information about sensitive subjects, and so on.
Soon, we're looking at the end of anonymity online entirely, in addition to all the other negative effects, like minors being prevented from accessing important outlets for information, connection, and support and everyone becoming more vulnerable to hackers and snoops. We're also looking at a lot more platforms being driven underground or offshore, where U.S. audiences can still access them but they're not necessarily beholden to U.S. oversight or law enforcement requests.
Oral arguments in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton are still ongoing as I publish today's newsletter, so I can't say much about how the justices seemed to be leaning. But if they lean the wrong way on this, the repercussions will be huge.
With AI, you can just make your own porn.
TN is another
They can get around it by just requiring a fee. Credit cards are proof of age to a point.
Pornography is probably the most powerful anti-American weapon used covertly against us by our enemies.
Well, I’m already into aviation porn. Imagine combining the two? Full frontal nose art, yeah baby!
Or just make real porn with your wife - old school.
This is revisiting COPA from the late nineties when the internet was first firing up and going. The GOP Congress passed it and Clinton signed it, but the Supreme Court struck it down.
But that was a federal law. States would seem to have the right to do this.
... age-verification laws are a “back door” way to banning porn....
A lot of “back-door” stuff going on in porn-hub videos, at least this is what I’ve heard!
Seriously, I don’t see the problem. There is no “right” to have porn accessible to every adult. If I don’t want to provide my real drivers license or ID, I just have to find another way. The porn purveyors still have their free speech. Viewers, even adult ones, just have to learn 3 letters...V.P.N.
I don’t see how this will change anything, the kids are smart enough to get a VPN, go to foreign “suppliers”, etc. Age verification is really intrusive. I’m not for kids getting all the porn they want, I’m against a “law” that wouldn’t work. It is a “feel good” law that cannot be administered, yet it is strong enough to attack our personal rights. Only the bad guys win and the good guys get penalized.
2. I have never believed that Free Speech covered pornography. If a state wants to ban it, there is a compelling state interest in doing so.
Government is a poor parent.
Oral arguments about porn… something sounds dirty about that.
Well I’m making an educated guess the public libraries and their advocacy groups are against this.
The kids will find a way to fake it. It’s the adults that will stop going when they have to give private information to prove their age.
If the government can force you to provide a valid drivers license to view porn perhaps they will get around to making you provide the same to view Conservative websites and social media content or perhaps Christian websites and social media content...this is as slippery a slope as they ever was.
Pornography was illegal until very recently, and should be illegal again.
Or just make real porn with your wife - old school.
Or with your harem - REALLY old school.
That’s correct.
I agree.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.