Re: Right to pr0n overruled

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

Jun 29, 2025 at 12:59:53 PM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com>:

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

Jun 29, 2025 at 8:20:37 AM PDT, moviePig <nobody@nowhere.com>:

6/28/2025 7:01 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

Jun 28, 2025 at 2:33:55 PM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com>:

Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton

Court allows Texas' law on age-verification for pornography sites
By Amy Howe
SCOTUSblog
Jun 27, 2025
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/court-allows-texas-law-on-age-verification-for-pornography-sites/

Where is Larry Flynt when we need him?

To protect children, Texas wrote the ultimate nanny state into law,
denying adults the ability to surf for pr0n anonymously. The state law
is not unconstitutional.

Not unconstitutional, but easily mooted given the easy access to and
use of VPNs.

Here's an article listing a lot of anonymous speech cases. Generally,
anonymity is protected with the major exception of campaign disclosure,

Intriguingly, dissenting from a denial of cert, Clarence Thomas said
there could be a need to protect campaign donors from disclosure in case
of potential retribution, but he has no such concern here.

Why wouldn't age verification infringe upon the right of anonymity?

Because, unless specified to the nearest microsecond, age doesn't
usefully identify an individual.

Yes, but the only practical way to verify people's age en masse is to
require them to provide an identity document, which typically provides
more info than just the person's age.

So please tell me why Clarence Thomas is right and I'm wrong. The ruling
seems to be at odd with the various cases that the First Amendment
protects anonymous speech (well, publishing). Why doesn't the First
Amendment protect anonymity here?

Clarence isn't saying the 'speakers' can't 'speak' anonymously. It's their
audience that has no right to anonymity.

It's an infringement upon time, place, and manner. The First Amendment
is a civil right for the speaker and publisher to reach the audience and
for an audience to hear a speaker and to read a publication.

One of the listed opinions found a state law unconstitutional that
required political literature to identify who paid for it. If the
publisher may be anonymous, then the audience may also be anonymous. If
there had been a state law limiting distribution of political literature
to identified recipients, that would have been unconstitutional.

Texas law is a restriction on distribution of pr0n that is not obscene,
which has First Amendment protection, not just obscene material that
lacks First Amendment protection. Distribution is part of publishing.

The First Amendment protects the most provocative speech, both speaker
and audience. State law may not regulate what the speaker says, but until
this decision, state law would not have regulated the audience without
strict scrutiny. Maybe security would have been required given a very
large audience, or an auditorium that meets building and fire codes. Such
regulations would meet strict scrutiny.

But a statute that no member of the audience could attend without
identifying himself would not have met strict scrutiny. With this
decision, strict scrutiny no longer applies.