Porn industry asks Supreme Court to block Texas law requiring age verification before accessing sites

Main: FILE - Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File). Inset: Pornhub banner at the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 24, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada (Image by Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

Main: FILE – Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File). Inset: Pornhub banner at the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 24, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada (Image by Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

A leading website of adult content asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Texas law requiring porn websites to verify the age of users in arguments before the court Wednesday.

The law at issue is Texas H.B. 1181, which requires internet companies whose content consists of more than one-third “sexual material harmful to minors” to “use reasonable age verification methods” to limit their distribution to adults, and to display a health warning before showing any such materials. Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton began enforcing the law in February, and shortly thereafter began a $1.6 million civil action against Pornhub for noncompliance.

Free Speech Coalition, an adult film industry association sued to block the law on both First Amendment grounds and grounds that it violated Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act. The district court sided with the challengers, but the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 in Texas’ favor.

In his dissenting opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham, a Ronald Reagan appointee, warned that limiting all access to material simply because it could be inappropriate to minors would be “to burn the house to roast the pig.”

“Although obscene speech lies outside the First Amendment’s umbrella of protection, not all sexual expression is obscene,” said Higginbotham, who pointed to “Marlon Brando movies,” scenes from “Game of Thrones,” “The Color Purple,” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” as inappropriate for children, but not legally obscene, as they do not lack cinematic value.

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