By Gavin Boyle
A Supreme Court ruling that considered First Amendment violations upheld a Texas law which requires adult websites to verify a user’s age before allowing them access to its content.
“The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspectives,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas when delivering the ruling. “That power includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person — adult or child — has a First Amendment right to access such speech without first submitting proof of age.”
“With the rise of the smartphone and instant streaming, many adolescents can now access vast libraries of video content — both benign and obscene — at almost any time and place, with an ease that would have been unimaginable at the time of Reno and Ashcroft II (a former ruling that challenged the legality of age-verification laws),” Thomas continued.
The Supreme Court battle over the Texas law H.B. 1181 had been in consideration since the law was signed by Governor Greg Abbott in June of 2023. Since then, numerous other states passed similar age-verification laws, all of whose legality were decided by this case.
While pornography websites claim that their opposition to these laws comes from a concern over First Amendment violations, in reality, they know that a large portion of their users are underage. In fact, Pornhub and other adult websites have shuttered their operations in states with age-verification laws rather than continue operations for adults only. This was taken to the extreme overseas when France passed an age-verification law and Pornhub completely ended operations in the country.
Related: Here’s Why We Need to Protect Kids from Porn Industry
“We’ve made the difficult decision to suspend access to our sites (user-uploaded content platforms, including Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube) in France,” said Alex Kekesi, VP Brand and Community for Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company.
With age-verification laws now getting the go-ahead in the US, hopefully even more states will follow suit and force the company the end operations in America as well. This would be an extremely positive change as, along with enabling underage users to access its sites, these companies also push dangerous and illegal content to get users hooked.
“They’re trying to zero in on what you’re interested in,” said Haley McNamara, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s senior vice president of strategic initiatives and programs. “And unfortunately, we know that with even mainstream pornography, even on the front page, first-time users are exposed to scenes of sexual violence.”
Any reduction of the access to pornography is a very good thing. Whether through age-verification limiting the access for underage users or the complete shuttering of the site, lawmakers should do everything in their power to stop the spread of this content.
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