OAN Staff Gabriella Sable
10:30 AM – Friday, June 27, 2025

The United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that a Texas law that mandated pornography websites have age verification is constitutional. The 2023 law H. B. 1181 requires certain websites with sexually explicit material that is extreme for minors to verify that the individual utilizing the site is over the age of 18.

In the opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court wrote that it is within the state’s authority to limit access to sexually explicit content for children. 

“The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content. H. B. 1181 is a constitutionally permissible exercise of that authority,”  Thomas wrote in the court’s opinion. 

“Because H. B. 1181 simply requires proof of age to access content that is obscene to minors, it does not directly regulate the protected speech of adults,” continued Thomas. “ A law can regulate the content of protected speech, and thereby trigger strict scrutiny, either “on its face” or in its justification. H. B.1181 does not regulate the content of protected speech ineither sense. On its face, the statute regulates only speech that is obscene to minors.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent in the case, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson joining. 

Kagan wrote that in restricting minors from accessing the sexually explicit content, they are also limiting adults from their First Amendment rights.

“The majority says that Texas may enforce its statute regardless, because only intermediate scrutiny applies and that test does not ask whether a State has adopted the least speech-restrictive means available,” Kagan wrote. 

“I disagree, based on conventional First Amendment rules and the way we have consistently applied them in this very context,” Kagan continued. “The State should be foreclosed from restricting adults’ access to protected speech if that is not in fact necessary.”

The case came to the Supreme Court after The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for pornography websites, sued the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that the law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and that it was overburdensome for the adults who wished to use the sites. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the court’s decision on X, calling it a significant step forward in shielding minors from explicit content online.

“This is a major victory for children, parents, and the ability of states to protect minors from the damaging effects of online pornography,” asserted Paxton. “Companies have no right to expose children to pornography and must institute reasonable age verification measures. I will continue to enforce the law against any organization that refuses to take the necessary steps to protect minors from explicit materials.”

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