Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case on Texas Porn Law

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of a Texas age-verification law. The high court granted certiorari in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (docket 23A925). Introduced by Rep. Matthew Shaheen (R) in 2023, Texas’ HB-1181 requires websites publishing a certain amount of “sexual material harmful for minors” to verify the age of every site visitor. The law applies to sites if one-third or more of their content is in this category. Sites face up to $3 million in penalties for violations. Similar laws are set to take effect or have taken effect in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia. The Free Speech Coalition, a pornography industry trade association, sued to block the law on First Amendment grounds. The U.S. District Court in Austin agreed in August to block the law, one day before its Sept. 1 effective date. U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra found the law likely violates the First Amendment rights of adults trying to access constitutionally protected speech. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially vacated the injunction, finding the age-verification requirements to be constitutional. The provision “is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” the court said.