June 27, 2025
Supreme Court upholds Texas age verification for porn sites 6-3
Supreme Court upholds Texas law requiring ID to access adult websites.
🔒Digital Rights📜Constitutional Law✊Civil Rights💡Technology
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Texas's law requiring age verification for access to adult websites, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing that the law "advances the state's important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit material" while requiring government-issued ID verification.
On June 27, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’s age-verification law for adult websites by a 6–3 vote, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion.
The Texas law applies to any website where more than one-third (33%) of content is “materially harmful to minors.”
Under the law, neither adult websites nor third-party verification companies may retain government-issued ID information after age verification is complete.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals originally upheld the law under a “rational basis” test rather than applying “strict scrutiny” to the speech restriction.
Texas’s statute allows “any commercially reasonable method” for age verification using public or private transactional data as an alternative to government ID upload.
The decision departs from roughly 40 years of precedent that had struck down state or federal ID-verification requirements for access to adult content.
Digital-rights advocates warn of a chilling effect: some adults may avoid constitutionally protected content rather than surrender anonymity and privacy.
Critics—including the Electronic Frontier Foundation—note that people without proper ID, those seeking anonymous access for safety, and other vulnerable groups could be blocked by these requirements.
🔒Digital Rights📜Constitutional Law✊Civil Rights💡Technology
People, bills, and sources
Justice Clarence Thomas (wrote the Supreme Court’s majority opinion upholding the law)
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (praised the ruling as a child-protection and state-sovereignty victory)
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What You Can Do
1
Track federal and state legislation and court cases on age-verification and internet regulation via congress.gov and supremecourt.gov.
2
Contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives to share your views on balancing child-protection goals with online privacy and free-speech rights.
3
Review digital-privacy guides and submit public comments on technology-policy rulemakings at federalregister.gov.
4
Consult resources from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) and the ACLU (aclu.org) to learn about protecting online anonymity and free-speech rights.
5
Explore parental-control and content-filtering tools responsibly, while advocating for transparent standards and enforcement safeguards in age-verification systems.