SCOTUS Upholds Age Verification Law: First Amendment Analysis

On June 27, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision upholding a state law that limits access to adult content online. Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton involves a challenge by the Free Speech Coalition, the group that represents the adult entertainment industry in this case, to a Texas law. That law requires websites to verify the age of all users, and ensure they are 18 years old or older, if at least one-third of a site’s content meets the law’s definition of “sexual material harmful to minors,” more commonly referred to as “adult” or “pornographic” websites.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the court, which voted 6-3 to uphold the law.

The decision began by noting that the government can restrict speech — which goes beyond the words someone might say verbally — entirely when it meets the narrow definition of “obscene.” It can also prevent children from accessing speech that is “obscene for children.”

The Texas law falls into the latter category, so the only question in this case is whether the law’s impact on adults who want to access this content violates the First Amendment. The Free Speech Coalition argued that too many adults would be prevented from accessing this content.

However, Justice Thomas described this impact as “incidental,” meaning the law would be subject to “intermediate scrutiny.” This is the same standard of review that’s applied to existing age verification requirements for in-person purchases of this same content and for other constitutionally protected acts like buying a gun, registering to vote and getting married.

The intermediate scrutiny standard requires that the law (1) have an important or substantial interest; (2) not target the content or message of the speech; and (3) advance that substantial interest, even if it’s not the best way to do so.

The court said:

• Texas’ interest in shielding children from sexual content is clearly an important one.
• The age verification requirement is a proper method of achieving that interest, given its widespread use: “Other age-restricted services, such as online gambling, alcohol and tobacco sales, and car rentals, rely on the same methods. And, much of the online pornography industry has used analogous methods for decades.”
• It did not matter that there might be other ways to protect children because a “regulation will not be invalid simply because a court concludes that the government’s interest could be adequately served by some less-speech-restrictive alternative.”

Now what happens?

The Texas law remains in effect. There are more than 20 other states that have already enacted age verification laws around the country at the time the decision was released. Many of those laws are also aimed at preventing minors from accessing sexual content on the internet, and they will likely remain in effect. Some are aimed at preventing children from accessing social media due to other concerns, and it is not clear whether this decision will affect those state laws. It is also likely that states could pass new similar laws, or perhaps the federal government may act to create a national standard.

What does it mean for the country?

If you are an American who views pornography online, it could soon get more difficult to view that content. Again, Texas is one of more than 20 states that have age verification laws. Minors in states where those laws are aimed at preventing access to sexual content may not be able to access this content at all. Adults will need to upload a driver’s license or provide some other proof that they are 18 or older to access content that meets the law’s definition of “sexual material harmful to minors.” Litigation over the state laws aimed at preventing minors from accessing social media platforms will continue, and it is possible one of those cases ends up at the Supreme Court within the next few years.

It remains to be seen whether websites containing the minimum amount of sexual content that is harmful to minors — which is one-third of all of the site’s content — must verify the age of users before they access any portion of the website or only before they access specific pages with sexual material that is considered “harmful” to minors.

Given these uncertainties and the cost of verifying age, it is possible that many pornographic websites — and many that aren’t certain about their status under the law — will simply make themselves unavailable in states with age verification laws.

How did this case start?

Texas is one of over 20 states that passed laws requiring age verification to limit minors’ access to adult content online.

The Texas law that was enacted in 2023 requires any website with more than one-third of its content seen as “sexual material harmful to minors” to both:

• Verify the age of their visitors to ensure that only adults can access the site.
• Display required health warnings about the effects of viewing pornography on all landing pages and ads.

The law defines “sexual material harmful to minors” as material that:

• Appeals to the sexual interest of minors, when applying local community standards.
• Is patently offensive with respect to minors because it has actual, simulated, or animated depictions of nudity or sexual acts.
• Lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.

Justice Thomas made it clear that this means pornographic content — and not content that might be inappropriate for the youngest internet users, like content that would qualify for a PG-13 or R rating under the Motion Picture Association standard used for movie ratings.

Websites can verify users’ ages by requesting that the user upload a scan of a government-issued ID or use a third party to verify ages. Penalties imposed on the websites for not doing so are steep: $10,000 per day for lacking age verification notices and $250,000 for each time that a minor accesses “sexual material harmful to minors.”

How did the case get to the Supreme Court?

The Free Speech Coalition sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to prevent the law from going into effect. A U.S. District Court in Texas stopped both parts of the law from going into effect, saying it violates the First Amendment because the law tries to restrict internet speech (pornography, in this case) based on its content. This would require the court to apply a “strict scrutiny” standard of review, which almost always results in the law being found to violate the First Amendment. The District Court said that although the state has an interest in restricting minors’ access to pornography, the age verification requirement will not accomplish this goal of protecting minors while also preventing some adults — those that don’t have government ID or don’t want to upload it in order to view a website — from accessing the content. The required notices were seen by the District Court as too burdensome and, therefore, were prevented from going into effect.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit overturned the lower court’s verdict in part. It said the law needed to be written in a way that is related to the government’s legitimate interest in protecting children. The court said the age verification requirement met this standard, but it said the required health warnings are likely to violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on compelled speech and retained the injunction that prevents that portion from being enforced.

RELATED: How does a case get to the Supreme Court?

What did the Free Speech Coalition argue?

The Free Speech Coalition challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, saying it put an unnecessary burden on adults who wish to access the content by forcing them to reveal their name and age. The coalition said there were other ways to keep children away from pornographic content without also putting a burden on adults, such as by using filtering software.

What did the state of Texas say?

Texas justified the law by comparing it to existing — and court-approved — requirements that physical stores have in place to restrict children’s access to pornography. Texas said these were not based on the content involved but on the need to protect children’s well-being. The state claimed its methods were valid because they focused on the most harmful content and because the filtering software advocated by the Free Speech Coalition had historically failed to work in this regard.

This article was updated on June 30, 2025. It will be updated with future developments.

Kevin Goldberg is a vice president and First Amendment expert at Freedom Forum. He can be reached at [email protected]