EMERGENCY APPLICATION
Court allows Texas to enforce age verification for online porn sites
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to temporarily block a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify their users’ ages. In a brief unsigned order, the justices turned down a request from a group of challengers that included an adult industry trade association to put the law on hold to give them time to seek review of a ruling by a federal appeals court.
There were no public dissents from Tuesday’s order.
The law, known as H.B. 1181, was originally slated to go into effect last September. But the challengers, led by the Free Speech Coalition, went to federal court in August, challenging the law’s constitutionality.
Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra barred the state from enforcing the age-verification requirement, concluding that it likely violated the First Amendment. By requiring adults to submit personal data, Ezra reasoned, the law would discourage adults from accessing the websites because of concerns about identity theft and extortion. Moreover, Ezra added, other alternatives – such as content-filtering systems – are better suited to achieve the state’s goal of shielding children from sexual content.
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