Today, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld, by a vote of 6-3, HB 1181, Texas’s age verification requirement for accessing online adult content. HB 1181 requires any website with more than one-third adult content to verify its visitors’ ages, thus threatening online anonymity by forcing users to submit government-issued ID or other personal information to prove their age.
“This is a big loss for the First Amendment,” said Corbin K. Barthold, Director of Appellate Litigation at TechFreedom. “The majority opinion ignores a pile of precedents, muddies First Amendment principles, and erodes Internet freedom, all in the name of saving a badly crafted statute. Rather than sending Texas back to the drawing board—forcing it to write a law that is narrowly tailored to protecting minors—the Court simply lowers the standard of scrutiny. It goes out of its way to let Texas age-gate adult content, and it opens the door to more Internet age-gating to come. This is result-oriented jurisprudence at its worst.”
“‘Save the children!’ statutes like HB 1181 are political winners, but free-speech losers,” Barthold concluded. “The states pushing these statutes should reconsider their approach. We need the tools and education that enable parents to set guardrails on their kids’ online experience, not state mandates that infantilize parents, don’t actually protect kids, and wreck the Internet for everyone.”
TechFreedom joined an amicus brief in the case, led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The case is Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 23-1122 (U.S.).
TechFreedom will discuss the decision in a Spaces event on X on Monday, June 30 at 12:30 pm ET.
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Find this release on our website, and share it on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at media@techfreedom.org. Read our related work, including:
- No, Internet Age Verification Has Not Been “Solved”, Tech Policy Podcast (Apr. 30, 2025)
- Letter expressing concerns about the Kids Off Social Media Act (Feb. 5, 2025)
- Amicus brief urging the Fifth Circuit to affirm the district court’s decision for a similar law in Mississippi (Oct 4, 2024)
- J.D. Vance is Part of Unconstitutional Porn Ban Push, Free the People (Aug. 14, 2024)
- Age-Gating Access To Online Porn Is Unconstitutional, Techdirt (Aug. 8, 2024)
- Amicus brief urging the Ninth Circuit to affirm a decision blocking enforcement of California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (Feb. 14, 2024)
- Closing the Digital Frontier, City Journal (Mar. 7, 2023)
- Red States vs. Every SCOTUS Internet Precedent, Tech Policy Podcast (Nov. 17, 2023)
- The Moral Panic Over Internet Porn Can’t Overrule the First Amendment, The Daily Beast (Sep. 7, 2023)
- Republicans Can’t Decide If They Want Online Privacy or Not, The Daily Beast (Sep. 5, 2023)
- Letter explaining why the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) threatens First Amendment rights (July 26, 2023)
- When Schools Scapegoat Social Media, Tech Policy Podcast (June 26, 2023)
- Desperate to Justify Unconstitutional Social Media Law, Utah Officials Blunder Through False Equivalencies, Substack (May 11, 2023)
- Save the Children (From State Social Media Laws), Tech Policy Podcast (Apr. 11, 2023)
About TechFreedom:
TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.