The Supreme Court ruled that Texas can require age verification to ensure minors aren’t accessing sexually explicit material online, saying the state’s law doesn’t infringe on adults’ constitutional rights. 

In the 6-3 ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas said a state has the authority to protect children.

“The power to require age verification is within a state’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content,” the Bush appointee wrote for the majority. He said the Texas law “is a constitutionally permissible exercise of that authority.”

He was joined by the court’s other five Republican appointees on Friday.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, said obscene speech for children is different from speech or material for adults. She said the court should have required a higher standard of review by the lower court to see whether the Texas law is constitutional under the First Amendment.

“The state should be foreclosed from restricting adults’ access to protected speech if that is not in fact necessary,” Justice Kagan wrote.

She was joined by the court’s other two Democratic appointees, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee.

The litigation involved a challenge to a Texas law that requires adult websites to verify the age of their users to protect children from accessing mature content.

The justices took up the case to decide if the lower court, which allowed the age verification measure to take effect, applied too low of a standard of review.

At issue was Texas House Bill 1181, which says online adult content providers must have age verification measures for users to access their sites. The law was enacted in 2023, as the state attempted to limit the flow of adult entertainment to minors.

A violation of the law could cost a company more than $10,000.

The law requires website users to enter a government-issued form of identification to prove their age. Companies cannot retain the information under the law.

Challengers from the adult film industry argued that the law violated the First Amendment. They argued that the lower court should have demanded more scrutiny before refusing to halt the age verification requirement from taking effect.

Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, criticized the high court’s decision.

“After today, adults in the state of Texas must upload sensitive information to access speech that the First Amendment fully protects for them. This wrongheaded, invasive result overturns a generation of precedent and sacrifices anonymity and privacy in the process,” he said.

At least 21 other states have similar laws.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the ruling a victory for children and parents.

“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,” he said.

The case is Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.