This article was written by Liz Lykins and published in WORLD.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on an age-verification law in Texas. The justices will deliberate whether the state’s law, which requires pornography sites to verify users’ ages, violates First Amendment rights. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton contends the regulation protects children from explicit material, but challengers argue it restricts protected speech.
While the justices initially keyed in on the effects of pornography on children, the oral arguments boiled down to what standard of review the court should use to evaluate the law’s constitutionality.
Signed into law in June 2023, Texas’ law requires pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access. Paxton compared the regulation to how brick-and-mortar “adult stores” require customer age checks.
The law mandates that only users 18 and older may access websites if more than one-third of their content is “sexual material harmful to minors.” To verify age, sites must require users to either provide digital information to prove their identity, comply with a third-party verification system that uses government-issued identification, or use a “commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data.”
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