The First Amendment will once again take center stage at the Supreme Court on Wednesday as the justices hear oral arguments in a challenge to a Texas law that requires age verification for porn sites.
Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, argues that the law tramples over First Amendment rights by chilling the ability of adults to access sexually explicit material. The law, the group argues, includes no protections to ensure that adults aren’t outed in the verification process.
The real goal of the law, asserted Mike Stabile, a spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition, is to put the porn industry out of business.
Texas, which enacted the law in 2023, counters that is has an interest in protecting minors from accessing online smut. And, the state says, adults can use third-party age verification sites to limit the risk of exposing their private online activities.
“No one has a constitutional right to view ‘teen bondage gangbang’ videos, much less hundreds of thousands of them,” Texas said in a brief last year.
The case is on appeal from the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with the state on age verification and overruled a federal district court order that blocked implementation of the law. The Supreme Court, in April, allowed the state to temporary enforce the law while the appeal was considered. There were no noted dissents.
It is the second major First Amendment case to be argued at the Supreme Court this month. On Friday, the court heard a challenge to the federal government’s ban on TikTok.
