Supreme Court Seems Ready to Back Texas Law Limiting Access to Pornography [View all]

Source: New York Times

Supreme Court Seems Ready to Back Texas Law Limiting Access to Pornography
The law, meant to shield minors from sexual materials on the internet by requiring adults to prove they are 18, was challenged on First Amendment grounds.

By Adam Liptak
Reporting from Washington
Jan. 15, 2025
Updated 3:51 p.m. ET

Several members of the Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed deeply skeptical of a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors' access to pornography, peppering a lawyer for the challengers with exceptionally hostile questions. ... The lawyer, Derek L. Shaffer, said the law violated the First Amendment by requiring age verification measures like the submission of government-issued IDs that placed an unconstitutional burden on adults seeking to view sexually explicit materials. He said parents could protect their children by using content-filtering software.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was incredulous. "Do you know a lot of parents who are more tech savvy than their 15-year-old children?" He added that "there's a huge volume of evidence that filtering doesn't work." ... Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has seven children, said "kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers." ... She added, "Content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with."

Much of the argument concerned whether the appeals court had erred in using a relaxed form of judicial scrutiny to block the law. Several justices indicated that a more demanding standard applied even as they suggested that the Texas law satisfied it.

That could set the stage for a ruling giving the challengers a short-term victory by returning the case to an appeals court for application of the stricter standard. But there was little doubt that the law would in the end be upheld. ... Indeed, several justices expressly asked questions about how the Supreme Court could vacate the decision below without blocking the law while the appeals court took a fresh look at its constitutionality under the correct standard.

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Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. More about Adam Liptak
https://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-liptak

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