No ID, no service. That’s the new reality for porn sites in Texas after the Supreme Court upheld a state law requiring age verification to access such sites on Friday.
The 6-3 decision is a major change in First Amendment law as applied to the internet and will likely lead more states to enact similar age verification requirements across the country. Porn sites that do not wish to comply will likely entirely block access in states with age verification laws, as PornHub, the largest online pornography site, did in Texas after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in 2024.
This is the first time the Supreme Court has approved a significant restriction on access to online pornography. Previously, in two separate decisions, the court struck down the restrictions imposed in the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 as unconstitutionally restricting free speech. Those laws, however, swept far more broadly than Texas’ anti-porn law, seeking to restrict access to materials that either included writing or was not pornographic in nature.
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