Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age-Verification Law for Online Porn

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Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age-Verification Law for Online Porn Content

Decision clears the way for numerous states to limit minors’ access to adult content

By Jessica Dye, WSJ

Updated June 27, 2025 3:13 pm ET

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that a Texas law requiring age verification for websites with sexual content is constitutional.

The Supreme Court said a Texas law requiring certain websites hosting sexual content to verify their viewers’ ages is constitutional.

The 6-3 decision upheld the Texas law, which is among more than 20 that have been passed by states in recent years requiring age verification for users seeking to access pornographic content online. It also affirmed the authority of states to implement similar measures.

“The First Amendment leaves undisturbed states’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court’s conservative majority. “That power necessarily 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 speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.”

The Texas law, known as HB 1181, requires websites that contain more than one-third “sexual material harmful to minors” to use “reasonable age verification methods” to determine whether their visitors are over the age of 18.

It gives websites options to verify users’ ages, including through the use of government identification or other personal documents. Violations of the law are punished with a monetary fine.

The Texas law exempts search engines from the age-verification requirement, along with major social media networks.

The state has argued that it was imposing the same kind of legitimate restrictions on pornographic content in the digital realm as there already are for similar content peddled by bricks-and-mortar retailers.

Thomas noted in his opinion that the need for age verification online was even greater than in person.

“Unlike a store clerk, a website operator cannot look at its visitors and estimate their ages,” he wrote. “Without a requirement to submit proof of age, even clearly underage minors would be able to access sexual content undetected.”

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by fellow liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. While she agreed that states had an interest in protecting minors from adult content, she said such laws should be narrowly tailored.

“The State should be foreclosed from restricting adults’ access to protected speech if that is not in fact necessary,” she wrote.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said: “This is a major victory for children, parents, and the ability of states to protect minors from the damaging effects of online pornography. Companies have no right to expose children to pornography and must institute reasonable age verification measures.”

The Free Speech Coalition, a trade group representing adult entertainment websites, sued to block the law, arguing that it was overly restrictive and intruded on adult users’ privacy.

The law was blocked by a federal judge, who found it violated the First Amendment. The judge applied a legal framework known as strict scrutiny, the most rigorous standard for reviewing laws that affect free-speech rights. To survive strict scrutiny, a law must be narrowly tailored, advance a compelling government interest, and be the least restrictive option available.

That decision was reversed by a federal appeals court. That court took a less strict approach, known as the rational basis review, which considers only whether there is a legitimate state interest for the law. In this case, the appeals court said that the government had a reasonable interest in limiting minors’ access to pornography.

“As it has been throughout history, pornography is once again the canary in the coal mine of free expression,” Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, said in a statement about Friday’s decision. “The government should not have the right to demand that we sacrifice our privacy and security to use the internet.”