Last June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1181 into law. It requires porn sites to verify a user’s age. Any company violating the requirement faces a fine of as much as $10,000 daily.
The Free Speech Coalition, a group that supports the adult entertainment industry, filed a complaint against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the new law.
In March, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 in favor of the age verification law, overturning a lower court decision that blocked its enforcement.
Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote, “The record is replete with examples of the sort of damage that access to pornography does to children … That is far more than what is necessary to demonstrate that the legislature did not act irrationally.”
In response to the Texas law, Pornhub announced that it was blocking access to its website in Texas, claiming that the state law was “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous” and that it violated “the rights of adults to access protected speech.”
In late April, the Supreme Court issued a one-sentence miscellaneous order declining to block enforcement of the Texas law while the legal proceedings continued.
This week, the high court agreed to hear the case of Free Speech Coalition et al v. Paxton, Attorney General of Texas, without comment.