Right to pr0n overruled

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.

Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion. He overturned the Fifth Circuit in
part as it used a rational basis test to uphold the law. He said they
should have used an intermediate scrutiny test -- and state law would
have been upheld using that test.

Appellants argued for a strict scrutiny test a la Ashcroft v. ACLU
(2004) in which federal criminal law protecting children from harmful
commercial content was found unconstitutional. Thomas's opinion doesn't
overturn Ashcroft but says it doesn't apply.

His opinion states that Texas is exercising a traditional power to
prevent minors from accessing obscene material (note that under a line
of cases in the 1960s, there is no First Amendment right to publish
obscene material).

"Adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification . . . "

We don't?

Americans have long had the right to write anonymously. Age verification
removes anonymity. What if age verification were applied to any on line
discussion forum in state law? After all, the children must be protected
from reading any text that might include obscene content or might
include in-line obscene images.

Let's point out the obvious that this is prior restraint. Children
are being restricted from viewing pr0n that has not been determined
to be obscene and that is protected by the First Amendment right to
publish. Pr0n isn't obscene (unless it is obscene); it's erotic. Obscene
material lacks First Amendment protection but erotic material has First
Amendment protection. There could certainly be a Web site like Watch For
Beauty that's strictly erotica -- just nude female models in provacative
poses with decent photography -- that wouldn't be labeled obscene.

You don't like my example? Search for your own pr0n.

Playboy magazine itself was always erotica, never obscenity.

Clarence Thomas just shredded the First Amendment.