The US Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law that requires users accessing pornography sites to verify their age using a government ID or a face scan.
The 2023 law was challenged by PornHub and other sites that argued the requirement violated constitutional rights to free speech by placing a burden on adults who want to access that content.
Texas has defended the law, saying it was created to limit harm to minors. More than a dozen other states have passed similar laws.
Ultimately, the justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines in a decision released on Friday.
“The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content,” Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the opinion, wrote.
In a two-hour hearing in January, the justices had appeared to agree with Texas that some form of safeguards should be in place to protect minors, but they also expressed concern about trampling on free speech rights.
Lawyers for the pornography websites in the case primarily relied on legal precedent in their arguments. They pointed to a 2004 Supreme Court decision, which ruled against an attempt to criminalise content on the internet that may be harmful to minors.
They also argued that asking users to submit identifying information may inadvertently bar adults from accessing their websites, effectively impeding on their First Amendment rights.
“Adults who submit, for example, a ‘government ID’ over the Internet to ‘affirmatively identify themselves’ understand that they are thereby exposing themselves to ‘inadvertent disclosures, leaks, or hacks,'” the adult film industry argued in their legal filings.
Critics also expressed concern about whether the law could be used to restrict other kinds of content intended for adults.
Texas lawyers, meanwhile, leaned on another legal precedent: a 1968 Supreme Court decision that upheld a New York law barring the sale of pornographic magazines to those who are underage.
State lawyers argued that the principles of that law have not changed “just because obscenity has moved online”.
After the ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton posted on X: “This is a major victory for children, parents, and the ability of states to protect minors from the damaging effects of online pornography.
“Companies have no right to expose children to pornography and must institute reasonable age verification measures,” he said.
Alison Boden, executive director of The Free Speech Coalition, the adult-entertainment industry trade association behind the lawsuit, said: “Pornography is once again the canary in the coal mine of free expression.
“The government should not have the right to demand that we sacrifice our privacy and security to use the internet”, she said, adding that the law has historically “failed” to protect minors.
Content adapted by the team from the original source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd1xp2l4wno
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