The United States Supreme Court supports the Texas porn sector law

If you try to access Pornhub, one of the largest websites in the world, from one of the 17 United States, you will be blocked. The parent company of Pornhub, Aylo Holdings, has limited access in response to a series of laws that states that Pornhub itself should be responsible for the control that each visitor is over 18 years old. Now, the United States Supreme Court has made a decision on a key verification law, which could have branches for the whole country and the entire Internet as a whole.

On Friday, in a 6-3 decision that could remodel the panorama of online privacy and freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has intended the law on the verification of the age of Texas, one of the first past in the country, which required many websites that publish pornographic content to verify that all visitors have more than 18 years old. The law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, the law, TX HB1181He says that the sites that are “more than a third of sexual material” can face fines up to $ 10,000 per day if they do not implement age verification systems, as well as extra sanctions up to $ 250,000. He also says that websites should display Health warnings on potential risks for the health of pornography.

Writing for the majority, judge Clarence Thomas said that, since the law “simply requires proof of age to access obscene content to minors, it does not directly regulate the protected discourse of adults”, adding, “adults do not have the right to the first amendment to avoid verification of age”.

In his dissent, judge Elena Kagan claimed that the law of Texas imposes a direct and unconstitutional burden on adult access to the protected discourse. “A state may not be interested in the protection of adult access to a sexually explicit speech; a state can even prefer to reduce those materials for everyone,” he wrote, “but the first amendment protects those sexually explicit materials for each adult”.

The sentence marks a great victory for the Prosecutor General of Texas Ken Paxton, who defended the law in the midst of the strong opposition by the digital rights groups and the adult entertainment industry.

Texas legislators exceeded HB1181 at the beginning of 2023, but it was hit In the United States District Court for the Western district of Texas to be potentially unconstitutional before the law entered into force. Group of the adult industry The coalition of freedom of speech, among others, has challenged the law of Texas on the basis of the fact that violates the first amendment by limiting adult access to the constitutionally protected discourse. In March last year, a Court of Appeal of the fifth circuit confirmed the Texas law before the coalition of freedom of speech taken The case to the Supreme Court in a January hearing.

In recent years, laws about age in states throughout the country have been proposed. More than half of the United States has exceeded or has tried to approve the laws on age, according to a Tracker Published by the Free Speech Coalition.

“The efforts to regulate online pornography are often the opening move in wider campaigns to censor the internet,” said Jess Miers, an assistant professor of law on visiting at the School of Law of the University of Akron, before the decision. “While this case focuses on the compulsory verification of age for adult content, state legislators hope that it provides a legal base to impose radical restrictions on a wide range of online material.”