Supreme Court reviews Texas anti-pornography law that opponents say violates free speech rights

WASHINGTON– The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared open to a Texas law aimed at preventing children from viewing pornography online, although the justices could still send it back to a lower court for further review of how the screening measure of age affects the free expression rights of adults.

Texas is one of more than a dozen states with such laws aimed at preventing young children and teens from viewing pornography. The states argue that the laws are necessary because online pornography, including hardcore lewd material, has become almost instantly accessible on smartphones online.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a member of the Court’s conservative majority, expressed similar concerns. “Technological access to pornography has exploded, hasn’t it?” he said.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment industry trade group, says the Texas law wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personally identifiable information online, making them vulnerable to hacking or hacking. follow up. Adult content website Pornhub has ceased operations in several states, citing technical and privacy hurdles in complying with the laws.

The Free Speech Coalition agrees that children should not see pornography, but says the new law is written so broadly that it could also apply to sex education content or simulated sex scenes in movies.

The law also leaves a loophole by focusing on porn sites rather than search engines often used to find porn, the group argues in court papers. Content filtering is a better alternative to online age checks, it says.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was skeptical, pointing to the growing number of ways children can access the Internet.

“Filtering content for all these different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with,” said Barrett, a father of seven.

This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has addressed this issue. In 1996, the court struck down parts of a law banning explicit content viewable by children online. In 2004, a divided Supreme Court ruled against another federal law aimed at preventing children from being exposed to pornography, but said less restrictive measures like content filtering were constitutional.

Texas says technology has improved significantly over the past 20 years, allowing online platforms to quickly and easily verify users’ ages with a quick image, more akin to ID checks in stores traditional laws upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1960s.

The states won in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a divided panel reversed a lower court and allowed the age verification requirement to go into effect. The Supreme Court previously rejected an emergency appeal to suspend age verification while the legal battle continues.

Still, some of the nine justices were concerned that the lower court did not apply a strict enough legal standard to determine whether the Texas law and others like it could run afoul of the First Amendment.

“How far can a state go in terms of requiring adults to show their age?” » asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Justice Elena Kagan raised concerns about possible “dangers of spillover” into other laws affecting free speech, regardless of the court’s decision.

Some judges appeared interested in the Democratic Biden administration’s position that they should send the case back to the 5th Circuit for further review. The court could even say that such laws, when carefully drafted, could meet higher standards, since everyone agrees that keeping pornography out of the hands of children is a laudable goal, the deputy solicitor general said principal, Brian Fletcher.

Other states with similar laws include Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia.

Texas law provides for fines of up to $10,000 per violation, which can go up to $250,000 per violation committed by a minor.

The court is expected to decide the case by June.

Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.