The nation’s highest court dealt a defeat to a trade group representing the pornography industry.
By Catholics for Catholics
In a setback against the porn industry, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to maintain a Texas law that requires users to prove their age before having access to pornography.
The decision calls on Pornhub to cancel access to all Texas users while claiming that the legislation infringed on free speech. The case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, focused on a requirement for users to demonstrate that they are 18 years old or older to access pornographic websites, according to The Daily Wire.
The ruling sustains a lower court’s decision against a trade group working on behalf of the pornography industry.
“Age-verification laws … fall within States’ authority to shield children from sexually explicit content. The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote. “That power necessarily includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech.”
“The power to verify age is a necessary component of the power to prevent children’s access to content that is obscene from their perspective,” Thomas went on to note, adding that the legislation “falls within Texas’s traditional power to protect minors from speech that is obscene from their perspective.”
But Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan disagreed, together with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.
“For adults cannot be limited to ‘only what is fit for children,’” Kagan wrote in the opposing view. “Their right to view ‘[s]exual expression,’ outside the traditional obscenity category, is ‘protected by the First Amendment,’” she went on to say before charging that Texas’ law “impedes the exercise of that right.”
“It imposes what our First Amendment decisions often call a ‘chilling effect,’” Kagan said of the law.
The Supreme Court’s ruling could pave the way for other states to enforce age restrictions on pornographic websites, with 18 states already passing akin legislation.
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