US supreme court rules in favor of age checks for pornography websites to keep children away

Court’s conservative justices said Texas law requiring online age verification didn’t violate free expression. PornHub had gone dark in Texas in protest of the law

The US supreme court ruled that a Texas law requiring that pornography websites verify the ages of their visitors was constitutional on Friday, the latest development in a global debate over how to prevent minors from accessing adult material online.

“HB 1181 simply requires adults to verify their age before they can access speech that is obscene to children,” Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s 6-3 majority opinion. “The statute advances the state’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data.” Elena Kagan dissented alongside the court’s two other liberal justices.