


The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a free-speech challenge to Texas’s age-verification law that prevents minors from accessing pornographic content online.
The justices denied the emergency appeal made by Free Speech Coalition, a national trade association representing the adult-entertainment industry. The trade group, American Civil Liberties Union, and other companies filed the request earlier this month, asking the Supreme Court to overturn a lower-court ruling that largely left the Texas law in place. In a one-sentence order, the Court did not provide its reasoning as to why the appeal was rejected.
H.B. 1181, signed into law by Republican governor Greg Abbott last year, remains in effect, per the Court’s order. The state law requires pornographic websites to verify users’ ages and institute health warnings in order to protect children under 18.
The petitioners argued the age-verification law, though it was targeted toward children, was unconstitutional because it placed an undue burden on adults desiring to access pornographic content. The legislation mandates that all users, including adults, provide personal information to determine their age. Free Speech Coalition argues this violates the First Amendment.
“Specifically, the Act requires adults to comply with intrusive age verification measures that mandate the submission of personally identifying information over the Internet in order to access websites containing sensitive and intimate content,” the emergency request states.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that the law’s age-verification and health-warning requirements were unconstitutional. However, in early March, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the age-verification ruling, though it upheld that the law’s mandated health warnings amount to unconstitutionally compelled speech.
A week following the appellate ruling, Pornhub restricted users’ access to its site in Texas. The company has done the same in North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, and Louisiana after those states passed similar age-verification laws.
Though it was disappointed in the Supreme Court’s denial of its stay application, Free Speech Coalition said it will continue challenging the Texas law.
“While the Supreme Court has denied our application to stay the Fifth Circuit’s decision upholding age verification requirements in Texas, our petition for full merits review before the Supreme Court remains pending. We look forward to continuing this challenge, and others like it, in the federal courts,” a spokesperson told National Review.
“The ruling by the Fifth Circuit remains in direct opposition to decades of Supreme Court precedent, and we remain hopeful that the Supreme Court will grant our petition for certiorari and reaffirm its lengthy line of cases applying strict scrutiny to content-based restrictions on speech like those in the Texas statute we’ve challenged. We will continue to fight for the right to access the internet without intrusive government oversight.”
Meanwhile, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, in February for failing to follow the state’s age-verification law. The lawsuit alleges Aylo’s websites either did not display age-verification pop-ups while loading or simply asked users to click “enter” when asked if they were over 18 years old.
With the litigation, Paxton is seeking to fine Aylo $1.6 million for not complying with the law from when it took effect in September to the date of the lawsuit’s filing in February.